


Renounced

by Zetared



Series: Reprise 'Verse [4]
Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Ableism, Angst with a Happy Ending, Aphasia, Blindness, Headaches & Migraines, Injury Recovery, M/M, Physical Disability, Physical Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-16
Updated: 2019-10-16
Packaged: 2020-12-17 18:24:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 56,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21058934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zetared/pseuds/Zetared
Summary: Jean-Luc’s first mission as Captain of the Enterprise is underway. A bizarre and terrifying alien entity arrives with unknown intentions. Q is tried for his crimes.Season 1-ish AU, starts with Encounter at Farpoint...ish? Basically, it’s not canon compliant at all.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> You can learn more about the “M Continuum” here: http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/M_Continuum
> 
> This story deals with massive physical injuries and a long recovery. I am not a doctor, so I apologize in advance for bad medicine--blame the future and its space weirdness. Moreover, it is my sincerest hope that nothing about this story comes off as ableist (on the part of myself as the author, I mean); if something strikes you as needing a tag, let me know, please.
> 
> Also, did it take me 4.5 years to write this installment? Yes. Yes it did. Sorry for the wait.

\--

_We’ve caught up._

The doors of the turbolift whooshed open. Q bolted from the cramped interior and strode forward on long legs toward his target. Jean-Luc appeared entirely at ease in the captain’s chair, his eyes bright. To an outside observer, his cool expression and careful posture would speak of a man unaffected by the novelty of the experience ahead of them. But Q could read the barely contained glee in the light of his eyes, the nervous tic of his toes against the floor. This was what Jean-Luc--what Q, especially--had been striving for all of these years. Their dream stretched before them, finally realized. Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the _U.S.S. Enterprise_, flagship of Starfleet. The entirety of the unknown expanses of the universe spread before them, full of promise and wonder and terror in turn.

Q wished he could bask in the glow, too, but he didn’t dare.

_We’ve caught up, _his mind pressed again, sharp and urgent. His gut churned with dread. 

Jean-Luc’s eyes settled upon him, widened in surprise, and then narrowed in faint irritation. “Q,” he sighed. His fingers twitched. Q recognized the aborted motion as the man resisting the urge to rub his temples at the mere sight of Q--a response learned over a lifetime of close association with him and likely reinforced in triplicate since they’d received word of this new, coveted post. 

Q smirked back at his husband out of a similar habit.

“Shouldn’t you be in the science labs, preparing your team for the upcoming mission?”

“Is that a suggestion or an order?” Q parried. His heart wasn’t in their usual back-and-forth, however. His eyes cast restlessly over the bridge, eyeing every member of the crew in turn. He wrapped his arms tightly over his chest. 

Jean-Luc frowned and cast his glance over to one of the new crew. Q recognized Deanna Troi from her dossier. Ship’s counselor, half betazoid. Her attention fell in laser focus on Q, at the moment, eyes following him as he paced. Her expression, what he could see of it from the corner of his eye, betrayed nothing. When she spoke, her tone was neutral and carefully measured. Q pretended to ignore her. He pretended to ignore all of them, despite his obvious hypervigilance. 

“Captain?” Troi began. She likely intended to suggest that the captain take his spouse aside to discuss the churning emotions she could, with her empathic abilities, feel roiling off of Q. But her well-meaning words were cut off by the ship’s operations officer.

The android, Data, spoke in an eerily modulated tone. “Sir. The detector circuits are registering an unspecified anomaly.” 

Sirens began to wail.

“Captain, I am sensing a...a very powerful mind,” Troi added. The words ground out through her clenched teeth, and her distress broadcast itself clearly in the way she leaned forward in her seat, wrapping herself bodily around some unseen source of pain.

“That’s one way of putting it,” Q remarked, under his breath. Jean-Luc shot him a look, apparently having heard him despite the rising chaos all around.

“What in the blazes is that?” Jean-Luc demanded of his crew, his eyes fixated on the viewscreen. An ominous shimmer stretched over the expanse of space, forming blood-red grating in its wake. “It looks like a net.”

“It is solid, Captain,” Data said. “I would suggest we come to a stop.”

“Make it so,” Jean-Luc agreed. His hands fisted at his sides as he stood from his chair. “Go to condition yellow. And shut off that damned noise.”

The sirens fell silent, and no one on the bridge so much as breathed for several long seconds. Q read the tension in Jean-Luc’s body and knew it for impatience rather than caution. Two of their crew waited at Farpoint Station for the arrival of the _Enterprise_. Jean-Luc held a near fanatical reverence of the itinerary for this maiden voyage; he was unhappy at being delayed.

The Conn announced their status of full stop to the rest of the ship. Q felt it, then, brushing against his once boundless brain. He could feel a hum in the air. The weight of the “powerful mind” Troi had mentioned fell over him, too, pressing on his shoulders and buzzing in his ears. Q lunged forward and pushed Jean-Luc behind the shelter of his taller form just as a flash of light and a roar akin to thunder filled the bridge. 

“Q, what--?”

Q held Jean-Luc back as the captain attempted to push past and approach the stranger who had appeared suddenly and dramatically on his ship.

The humanoid woman’s expression held no warmth. Her pale face set cool and blank as a porcelain mask. Hair as bright as fire, as red as the boundary surrounding the _Enterprise_, coiled in an intricate fashion on top of her head. She wore a strange, outdated dress with voluminous skirts. Q recognized her instantly, despite the stunning similarly she bore--in this costume--to a young Queen Elizabeth I. 

“Not you,” Q breathed. His mechanical heart picked up speed, whirring frantically away in the cage of his ribs. Despite his words breaking the silence, her eyes did not so much as flicker his way. She stared out into space and spoke to the ship at large.

“Consider this a notification: You and your kind have infiltrated the galaxy too far already. You shall return to your own solar system immediately or face dire consequences.”

Q could hear a ruckus behind them. Reinforcements poured from the turbolift, no doubt with their phasers drawn. Q twitched as the woman waved a dismissive hand and all motion behind his back went abruptly still. The containment field glowed in the corner of his eye. He dared not look toward it nor behind him, however. He kept his gaze on the entity, unwavering. He couldn’t miss a second for fear of what might occur in the span of a single blink.

“Let me by, Q,” Jean-Luc hissed into Q’s ear. The captain’s annoyance was likely caused as much by the picture they made for the crew as the strange situation they found themselves in. The ship’s captain cowering behind his CSO didn’t make for an impressive tableau, especially on their first day out. Q dug his heels in. He couldn’t afford to back down.

The regal lady in question stared ahead in silence as she waited for a direct reply. 

“Jean-Luc, please,” Q cut in in a low plea, “Please. Don’t.” Q’s voice stretched tight with desperation. He didn’t have the time or the means to explain himself, in this moment. He only hoped his obvious terror would suffice to make his husband and captain see sense.

“Whatever is happening, it is my responsibility as the captain of this ship to rectify it,” Jean-Luc--no, _Picard_, when using that imperious tone--reminded him in a firm, no-nonsense voice.

“Damn you and that disgusting sense of duty. It’s times like these that I miss the old days when you were nothing more than a loveable cad who answered to nothing and no one.”

Q could feel the huff of Jean-Luc’s laughter against his neck. He pushed past Q and began to approach the woman where she stood, unmoving and quiet. “Liar,” he mumbled fondly as he slipped by. Q had to admit that his distaste for Jean-Luc’s youthful exploits had been well documented before, during, and after each event. Q had often had cause to loudly vocalize his distaste for Jean-Luc’s “dangerous, hairbrained” schemes. The current scenario was not unlike those same, daredevil actions of their shared youth, in fact. The churning sensation in his gut--part anticipation, part horror--certainly felt familiar.

“‘Return or face dire consequences.’ That’s quite the directive,” Picard told the woman. She merely blinked in recognition at finally being answered. “Would you mind terribly identifying yourself? What are you? Who are you?”

Q sucked in a sharp, painful breath and held it. He waited on tenterhooks for the single-letter utterance that would, after all this time, bring this whole reality crashing down around his ears. 

“We call ourselves ‘M.’”

Q choked on the breath in his lungs. He hadn’t expected to hear _that_. “No,” he denied, far too loudly, though thankfully no one seemed to pay him any mind. Even if they had noticed his fearful reaction, no one present but M could possibly understand.

“You may call me ‘M,’ also. It is all the same thing.” The entity gestured to herself. “I have presented myself as a figure of station so that you might better understand me and respect the directive we have to impart: Go back to where you have come from.”

Picard turned his attention over her shoulder. His eyes, however, caught the flash of movement too late. “No!” the captain shouted, but the armed Ensign had already broken ranks and pushed forward, ready to fire at the intruder from behind. 

The woman did not snap or wave a hand. She simply tilted her head slightly, and the Ensign fell still. He appeared frozen in time like so much ice. Q closed his eyes, knowing what to expect next. The body fell with a dull thud to the bridge floor. It didn’t shatter, but Q knew that was only a matter of indifference and not empathy on M’s part. 

Troi rushed forward to provide aid. Q opened his eyes just in time to catch Picard advancing on M. He reached out and attempted to snag Picard’s sleeve. His weak grip was no match for Picard’s determination, however. Q found himself with empty, clutching hands as Picard gestured broadly at M, his long strides placing him mere inches from the entity in seconds.

“We wouldn’t have hurt you,” Picard shouted at her, his voice too sharp and raised in anger to be considered diplomatic. “Our phases are set only to stun!”

M’s cool expression showed its first hint of emotion. Her brows drew together slightly, causing the tiniest of creases between them. “What does the difference matter? Knowing the ways of the barbaric Human race as you do, Captain, would _you_ wish to be made captive by them? I say it thrice-time and for the last: Go back now or you shall die.”

Q expected the entity to leave them on that dire pronouncement. In fact, she seemed poised to do so, raising her hand as if in prelude to a disappearance as flashy and sudden as her arrival. At the last second, however, her bored gaze fell at a point past Picard’s shoulder and bore directly into Q’s very soul.

Q stepped reflexively back. “Please,” Q said, unable to hide the tremble in his voice. “Whatever happened to you, you don’t need to do this. You’re a--you’re _not_ an M. And whatever you are or aren’t, you and your people have no need to do this all over again, anyway. It’s over! It’s done!”

M smiled for the first time. Her teeth bared like a vicious animal’s, not at all pleasant or kind.

“Things have changed in ways that your limited consciousness could not hope to imagine. Besides, my dear. You know what they say.” Her imperious, ancient dialect fell aside, sliding into modern Standard with ease. Her disguise shimmered to follow suit. She mirrored the tic of the ship’s captain as she tugged sharply at the hem of her command red Starfleet uniform. “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

“No,” Q repeated, as if this time would be the charm, as if this would be the magic negative that would prevent the strangeness that he could perceive that the rest of the crew could not. “I won’t let you do this.”

Picard reached out, this time, to grab at Q as he strode past. Q’s fists clenched, ready to fight. Q tried to shrug Picard off one time, half-heartedly, but in the end he fell still and allowed himself to be gripped in the captain’s brutally tight hold. Q’s arms would bruise, later. Such was an especially unpleasant thought when standing toe-to-toe with a member of his former kin. Q--or, rather, M--had never known the ache of a bruise in her long life. She had never known physical pain at all. She never would.

M snapped her fingers, then, and all the anxious shuffling and murmuring of the officers around them fell still and silent as death. Even the steady, almost imperceptible, hum of the ship’s engines went quiet, leaving behind a ringing type of silence that pressed on Q immediately, as tangibly heavy and restraining as the hands locked still around his arms. Now, Picard’s grip felt more like a cage than a comfort. M’s intercession remained a boon, regardless. Speaking plainly would be significantly easier knowing that the mortals--besides himself--wouldn’t remember the impending conversation once M put the flow of relative time back to rights again.

M frowned at him, her eyes roving over the picture he and Picard made. “Are you truly so foolhardy that you would put yourself between him and me even crippled as you are? You were always impulsive, but this is beyond the pale.”

“They have already passed this trial,” Q snapped at his former wife, having no time or patience for her arch tone or smug, smirking mouth.

“You said it once yourself, my husband. ‘The trail never ends.’ Did you think creating one measly alternate timesteam would make any difference?”

“Where are they, then? The others? Where are the rest of the Q?”

M’s shrug was eloquent. “Gone, most of them. They defected. After the cleave in reality occurred, events in our past became...strained. Arguments rose between the members of the Q and M Continuums as they had done before. The Q began to argue among themselves, as well. The Q civil war began again. The M Continuum were contacted by the losing faction of that war at the final hour--a last and desperate resort. After much deliberation, the M joined the opposing side, instead. The faction of Q rebels failed to win the war, in this reality. Without you, things were...different. It all went badly. But don’t let that go to your head.”

Q hesitated a moment, processing this. With his memories of his time as a member of the Q Continuum so far behind him, he struggled to piece together every that M had to relate. “So now you’ve all become M? You altered your allegiance? You joined _them_?”

“Those of us that survived the war, yes. The rest of the former Q were dealt with promptly--snapped out of existence entirely, in fact, for fear of another rebellion and another war.”

“I--I had no idea anything like that would happen. I didn’t intend to--if I had understood the implications, I would have--.”

M rolled her eyes, folding her arms in a parody of Q’s own nervous hug from what felt like hours previous. “You would have done exactly what you did, Q. Even without considering the larger impact, you were already prepared to sacrifice what you _knew_ you would lose from the former reality. Your spouse. Our son. A life lived with your own kind. Do not tell me that the unanticipated creation of a simple mirror universe would have possible kept you from acting exactly as you did. You would have done anything to bring this Human back.” Her cold gaze flickered, just briefly, to Picard’s frozen aspect. Then her eyes fell to Q again, and Q shuddered at the hatred he saw in them.

Q stared at his former mate, stricken in a way he never could have been before his time spent squandering in mortality at Jean-Luc’s side. Living as a Human had softened him in ways that M, as perceptive and all-knowing as many of her race, likely delighted to see. His corruption by the burden of mortality could only make her revenge upon him sweeter, in the end. The existence of emotions and presence of nerve centers would make the infliction of pain and suffering against one’s enemy more enticing, Q was sure. In fact, perhaps the M should have turned all of the Q rebels into mortals, at the end, instead of wiping them from existence. It would have been a much crueler fate for most. Too late, now, though. Far too late to remedy any of that mess.

Q shook off a creeping sense of guilt. “I didn’t do it _just_ for Picard,” Q argued, weakly.

“It seems that you have taken up the mortals’ penchant for self-delusion in addition to their cowardice.”

“That stings.” “The truth often does.”

Q sighed. He allowed himself to fall limply against the supporting grip of his frozen spouse. “What do you plan to do with them? The crew?”

“Them?” M echoed, affecting surprise. “Q. I have no plans for _them_ at all. My little exercise in drama before aside--and it was fun, I admit; I can see why you always enjoyed muddling in the affairs of this tin can, before--I am here for you and you alone.”

M advanced, then, and she did so not with physical strides but in a flash of achingly familiar light. Q found his vision spotted afterward, an afterimage of it burned into his retinas for long seconds. Beyond the shimmery, glowing circles, M’s eyes--once beloved, in their way--sparked with malice. She was definitely all M, now, and not the curious, spitfire Q he remembered. The M. What jerks.

M grabbed Q’s chin in her hand, digging into his skin with her long, red-painted nails. “It will be such a joy to watch you suffer,” she breathed in a low purr. “I’ve thought about it for so long, you know. A whole eternity.”

“It’s a bitch being omniscient, isn’t it?” Q ground out between his squashed lips. “All those timelines, all those possibilities playing out in your head all at the same time. If you had been Human, all of time and reality could have obligingly altered seamlessly around you when I created the schism. You never would have noticed a thing out of place.”

“Yet _you_ remember both timelines.”

Q’s attempt to grin was thwarted by her vice-like hold on his face. He tried it, anyway. “True. But if you’ll recall the details of the deal I made with the Q Continuum, I’m only _mostly_ Human.”

A flash of light appeared between them, then, throwing M backward a few steps. Despite his effort, Q was not able to use the same force to shake himself free from Picard’s frozen grasp. His small stirring of power wasn’t anything to write home about. Even so, it was literally the best he could do (and he’d be regretting the action for hours, no doubt, already slumping forward in the resulting rush of bone-deep exhaustion).

“You little--,” M hissed.

Q righted himself as best he could and worked his jaw, made stiff from the pain of her crushing grip. “Now, now, is that any way to speak to one’s husband?”

“Ex-husband,” M snarled. She ran her hands through her mussed-up hair. Otherwise, she appeared completely unscathed. The defensive move had surprised the powerful entity, at least. She stayed back several steps, obviously loath to touch him again for fear of another attach. “Parlor tricks won’t save you. I intend to see this through until the end.”

“What end is that, exactly? My death?”

M sniffed. “Death is more than you deserve.”

Q scoffed. “If you think death is a lesser punishment, it’s very obvious that you’ve never been mortal before.”

“And you’ve been mortal too often and too long if you think that death is the worst I can do to you.”

“I don’t, actually. I was hoping.”

M’s red-lipped smile went sharp as a blade. “Hope is the first thing you will lose.”

Light--not of Q’s making, this time--appeared again. When the spots cleared from Q’s vision he found M gone and the bridge in total chaos as the Starfleet crew tried and failed to make sense of the oddness that had occurred...the parts of it they had been present for, anyway.

Q shook off Picard’s grip and slunk away in the ensuing confusion, hiding in his labs while the captain and his officers deliberated about what had happened and how to proceed. None of them knew anything of what was to come. Q envied their total ignorance. He’d heard it was bliss.

\--

Acting as Chief Science Officer was trying at the best of times, thanks to _people. _Acting as CSO during a bonafide crisis was infinitely worse--also thanks to _people_, those insufferably hollow-brained wastrels that Starfleet so optimistically branded their “best and brightest.”

Q ground his knuckles into his eyes for the third time in as many minutes. How had he ever thought himself capable of taking on the role of CSO? Not that he couldn’t handle the work--he could run circles around any other scientist in the fleet when it came to the job itself. But the _management_ expectations made him tense and bitter. He had more important concerns, at the moment, than babysitting a herd of clumsy peons. 

“Swenson, if you continue to chuck those storage boxes hither and yon with so little care, I will send you right down the brig for a month, don’t think I won’t! Blanca, why are your arms empty? People, under no circumstances should a single one of you be sauntering about empty-handed; there are sixteen kilos worth of equipment in cargo-storage waiting for a proper home with only you to rely on. Move it!” 

It appeared that M had spoken true about the constants of the multiverse. Jean-Luc had so far made much the same choices in the current timeline as Q recalled him making before. For a time the _Enterprise’s _engines had been pressed to her limits and beyond in a foolish attempt to outrun the M’s massive grid. Then, on cue, the Captain’s voice--tight with strain, making Q’s heart ache in a way he’d rather not acknowledge even to himself--had rung out, announcing the impending separation of the saucer from its moorings and the bridge crew’s intent to use the Battle Bridge to overtake their alien foe. 

The tactic had been a questionable plan the first time around, in Q’s opinion, and even more foolish upon repeating. Still, there was some comfort in following the familiar track, and it seemed prudent for Q to keep his nose out of the proceedings as much as possible for fear of drawing M’s ire sooner than necessary. Even lying low, Q knew he wasn’t safe. Eventually, the other shoe would drop. Probably right on top of his head.

In the meantime, there was work to be done and idiot Starfleet officers to berate. Perhaps this age-old tactic of self-distraction would have been successful, too, if not for the way old memories kept pushing themselves to the forefront of his limited mortal mind, a grim reminder of just what awaited Jean-Luc and his hapless officers, assuming this new universe and the old one continued to stay on a similar progression. The courtroom had been dark and dank. Picard had put on a convincing act of bravado, the first time around. But then, that time, Q himself had been his aggressor. Picard had, in all truth, been perfectly safe during that encounter. 

Could such gregariousness be assumed of M and her ilk?

“Swenson!” Q snapped, pushing a hover-dolly of boxes into the youngster’s already well-burdened grasp. “Take over the relocation procedures. I want everything moved and secured by the time the saucer is released or _so help me_, understood?”

“But, sir! Where-where are you going?”

Q sighed. “To be very stupid, Ensign. Now, get to work.” 

\--

There was something about the thick, pungent air and stony-faced spectators of M’s courtroom that made his own illusionary court seem almost bright and cheery by comparison. It was, Q decided, a matter of intent. Intent was everything within the Continuum, be it Q or M. Q’s true intent had been discovery, a means by which to appease his curiosity and assuage the doubt of his fellows as to the worthiness of the Human species. M’s intent spoke to something altogether more sinister, and it made Q’s very Human knees quake. 

“Q? What are you doing here?”

“Did you intend to leave me with the civilians and children while you went charging off into certain death, _mon ami_? Really?”

“This isn’t certain death,” Jean-Luc argued, sharply, but as his eyes tracked around the loud, grim courtroom, he seemed to doubt his own pronouncement. Q couldn’t blame him.

“The amassed court will rise for our most respected Judge!” The woman speaking was dark-skinned and broad, her expression showing the ferocity and cunning to which only a brutal official of the 21st Century courts could aspire. Her short, barked command had every dirty, bloodthirsty soul in the room on their feet in an instant. Even Q, already standing, felt himself straighten up in response. The rest of Jean-Luc’s people followed their Captain’s lead and remained in their seats. 

“This is real, Captain. It is no illusion or dream,” Troi whispered at Jean-Luc’s elbow. She wasn’t exactly correct--it wasn’t reality _or _a mirage, in fact, but a new pocket realness created from scratch, a copy of a real moment in Humanity’s past. In short, impossible to explain properly to a mortal, and even more impossible in their current environment. Therefore, Q decided not to bother explaining it. Instead, he concentrated his efforts on avoiding more complications than necessary. 

“You should all stand,” he hissed out, instead. “Immediately.”

“Q--.”

“Please, Jean-Luc.”

Jean-Luc frowned, standing as bidden, if only out of a sense of spousal duty. “You’ve said that word a lot today, Q, perhaps more in the last few hours than I’ve heard from you in a lifetime. What is going on?”

“Can’t a man be polite?” Q replied, airily. His eyes strayed to the shadowy doors beyond, waiting anxiously for the entrance of a woman he’d once loved and now feared. _Hell hath no fury…_ he thought, but the mental gibe rang hollow. He’d left his mate behind with no thought for her well-being. He’d abandoned his only offspring, the only true Q child ever conceived. Did Little Q even exist, now, in this timeline? It was difficult to say how the Universe might have rippled back upon itself, correcting the tiny faults and cracks that Q’s deal with the Continuum had made in it. 

Jean-Luc’s knuckles brushed purposefully against Q’s own and all of Q’s regrets and reservations disappeared like so much smoke._ It was all worth it._ And in allowing that simple, innocent thought to form, Q knew without doubt that he was exactly as guilty as M’s court would doubtless charge him. 

The bailiff raised her arms up in greeting and entreaty both as the giant, imposing seat of the Judge descended from above. M’s face set stiff as a mask, cold and blank and uncaring. Q doubted he’d presented himself even half so well during his own turn in the seat. He’d always been far too excitable to make that aloof authority schtick convincing. M, though, M had the dead eyes and pursed mouth of a true magistrate, lording her stature over the unwashed masses with ease. 

“Whatever happens,” Q found himself muttering to Jean-Luc, his voice rough with fear and every word tumbling out in a messy rush, “I hope you know that I love you and I hate you and I blame everything that is about to occur on your stupid, selfish _mortality_.” He spat out the last word like a curse, lip curled back in complete disgust.

Jean-Luc gamely glowered back, which Q admired, knowing as he did that his husband must be deeply confused. 

Many aspects of his own mortality--of his Humanity--struck Q as strange, but one of the strangest was the propensity of the Human mind to recall memories unbidden, often at the worst possible times. As M loomed above them, cruel and untouchable, Q found himself lost in a fragment of the past, brought about by no catalyst that Q himself could recognize. In that cold, boisterous, and dangerous court, Q could only think of a long-ago winter’s afternoon during their childhood in France. Snow against the window. The two of them had huddled together under a freshly-washed sheet, small heads hovering close over the pages of an open, paper book. Jean-Luc had read the narration bits in precise, careful diction. Q covered all the dialog, adopting unique and silly voices for each of the characters until Jean-Luc had literally lost the plot, shaken to the core with giggles of pure, wicked glee. Q had, upon waking, thought he would die of boredom trapped inside the Picard’s humble home. He should have known then, as now, that he could withstand anything, even monstrous boredom, as long as Jean-Luc was nearby.

Q took Jean-Luc’s hand. He expected the Captain to pull away--fairly, perhaps, all things considered--but instead Jean-Luc’s grip tightened firmly around his own, and Q watched as his spouse’s chin raised in a motion of defiance as he spoke, his query directed toward the cold, imperious figure still hovering above their heads. “So, we are to be tried, I take it? With what have we been charged?”

M frowned slightly and glanced over at the imposing woman who acted as her bailiff. “Before this gracious court once appeared these Humans to answer for the multiple and grievous savageries of their species. They were, at that time, found acceptable in the eyes of the jury and judge alike.”

Jean-Luc’s confusion now made him angry. His gaze narrowed at the collected court. “If our species--such as it were--has been previously tried and found innocent, why are we here now?”

“This court convenes now not to convict Humanity but to cast judgement upon the entity known across these galaxies as Betrayer, Kin-Killer, and Destroyer of Time.”

“I know of no such entity,” Jean-Luc argued, sharply. “Therefore, my crew can be of no use to you in this matter.”

Q realized M’s plan for him the moment those damning words left Jean-Luc’s lips. Selfishly, Q squeezed Jean-Luc’s hand tightly in his own one more time, hissing out a low “No, don’t!”. Picard’s gaze turned to Q in response, his brows raised.

M’s lip curled in a smug half-smile, her eyes glittering like stars in the cold vacuum of space. “Very well. If that is the case, the innocent may be dismissed.”

Jean-Luc tensed, clearly aware that the acquisition of this dismissal had been managed far too easily. He likely expected continued danger, perhaps believing that they would all be transported into the blackness of space or left to some other terrible fate. Q knew better. Picard and his people had not sinned against the Continuum in this timeline, after all. M had swept the _Enterprise_ crew along for the ride as a decoration, all part of the show. 

Q wished he still had control over the arduous flow of time. He could have stopped the seconds from passing, would have stolen a moment in which to create his own eternity, a dozen lifetimes in which to tell his husband goodbye. The traitorous seconds passed unencumbered, though, and familiar light blinded Q’s paltry Human vision as his only hope was stolen away--returned, no doubt, to the safety of the ship. Q stood alone where once a whole crew of people had stood beside him, and his throat went tight with fear.

His legs went weak with the terror of it all and he sat down abruptly in the awkward velvet seats. _I’ve never been so vulnerable_, he thought, which was saying something for a fragile Human Starfleet officer, especially one attached at the hip to a man like Jean-Luc, who seemed to attract excitement and danger wherever he went. 

“Q of the Q Continuum, mate of Q, father of Q, friend of Q and Q and also Q, you have been charged with willful negligence toward the proper continuation and well-being of one’s own species, the haphazard splintering of a once stable timeline, and the abandonment of your universal duty as Q. How do you plead?”

Q refused to meet M’s gaze. He stared instead at the floor and tried desperately to ignore that the tile was permanently stained in places with generations of spilled blood. _It’s only a pocket reality, _he told himself, _it’s only real in the loosest sense_. He couldn’t remember the actual specifics of how such pocket dimensions worked, however, and that lack of knowledge made him feel unsure. What was real, after all? The air smelled of rank bodies and death, here. It was overly hot, here. The chair beneath him was uncomfortable, the velvet sticky and the wooden back too straight. To his humanoid senses, limited as they were, it was all real enough. “The Continuum agreed to my request,” he argued, his voice faint despite himself, “I did only what they allowed of me.”

“Lies,” M hissed, her voice as Judge, once formal and distant, now full of malice. “In return for your service of eons, and in an attempt to prevent you from rash action, the Q Continuum allowed you the opportunity to go backward in the existing timeline and _observe_.”

“I’ve never been very good at just spectating,” Q replied, feeling hollowed out, somehow, and therefore unable to keep the unwise words at bay. He knew he should keep his mouth shut, he knew that he should strive to be agreeable on the off chance such deference would lead to his salvation, but his heart wasn’t invested in such deep deception. Buttering up the court would likely make no difference, anyway. Not for the Destroyer of Time. Not for a Kin-Killer. Not for Q.

“You meddled. Immediately. Practically the instant you arrived at the predetermined point, you made deliberate contact with a living occupant of history.”

“Picard was hurt. I had to help him.”

“In the original timeline, he survived the incident. His injuries were minor, at best. You knew this.”

“He was in pain. He was alone. I was standing _right there_.”

It wasn’t the first time Q had helped Jean-Luc Picard out of a scrape, and yet it _was_ the first time. The Universe could not abide such a paradox. Everything had shattered around him the moment he appeared at Jean-Luc’s side and offered the little boy his own small hand. Even at the time, even having felt the whole of existence tremble, shatter, and reform, Q hadn’t questioned his choice. Q had broken time and altered all the known galaxies over the broken leg of one reckless child.

“How do you plead?” M demanded, and she was right in his line of sight, now, almost so close that he could have touched her if he dared.

“Guilty,” Q said, with no hesitation, “And I don’t regret it. Not even now.”

M’s eyes flashed. “Thousands are dead who were once not dead. Entire planets have been affected by your selfishness, entire cultures irreparably altered. _Our son_\--.” 

Q closed his eyes, grateful that she had been unable to finish, choked as she was by sudden, uncharacteristic emotion. “I don’t regret it,” he repeated, though every word scraped against his insides as it was spoken, tearing him apart. 

“It has been argued that there is no sentence harsh enough to serve you proper justice. It is the opinion of this court, however, that those who say so simply do not know you as well as I do. Once there was a time when your kin felt _mortality _was the greatest punishment they could possibly bestow upon you.” She looked him up and down, then, as if he were mud on the bottom of her shoe. “Clearly, things change.”

Q flexed his hands, stiff with scar tissue, and thought of the mechanical heart whirring tirelessly away in the fragile cage of his ribs. He remembered in rapid succession suffering dozens of little Human ailments over the years--headaches and fevers and restless, dreamless nights. He thought about the passage of linear time and the way it branded a man, leaving his skin sagging and his hair thinned. Such memories, such experiences, left a bitter taste in his mouth, the acrid flavor of self-disgust. But in the midst of such terrible recollections, he remembered more moments like that long winter in the French countryside, pressed warmly against another living, mortal body, a boy he loved. He recalled with a small smile his first sip of homegrown wine, his first Academy party, his first kiss shared with the man for whom he’d once traded an entire universe. “Yes,” he agreed, his feelings of revulsion, fear, and regret softened under the force of such tender remembrance. “Things do change.”

“Quinton Hill, now called Q, once called Q of the Q Continuum, this court finds you guilty as charged. Your sentence shall be carried out immediately.” And then, only in Q’s mind, she said “_And indefinitely.” _

“Wait!” Q stood on unsteady feet once more, panic washing away every other emotion, leaving him fairly buzzing with sudden adrenaline. “But what--?”

M’s gavel fell with a resounding bang. Everything fell into nothingness, silent and dark as the uncounted eternity before the _other _big bang, the one that had, twice over, started it all.

\--


	2. Chapter 2

\--

Jean-Luc slumped in the shadows of the trees, sprawled in the dirt, clutching at the shattered line of his leg. His tears were silent, but Q didn’t need to hear sobs and sniffles to recognize the clenched tension of the boy’s shoulders, the pained bow of his neck. Years and years later, Captain Picard the man would affect a similar posture when suffering great distress. Q had watched him sit thus, alone in his quarters, for hours on end. Watching the man suffer. Unseen. Silent. Useless. 

Q stepped out from his hidden place and felt Humanity lock firmly around him like a cage the moment young Jean-Luc met his eyes. Even embodying the form of a child himself, Q towered over the other boy. He knelt down, not wanting to add any stress to an already untenable predicament. “You probably can’t walk on that, can you?” Q asked, frowning at the wound.

Jean-Luc continued to stare at him. He rubbed the back of a grimy hand over his wet cheeks before answering. His voice was high with youth and higher still with poorly concealed pain. “I could try.”

Q rolled his eyes. “Better not. Right now, a good regenerator can fix that up perfectly, if we get to one fast enough. But if you walk on it, you’ll damage it too much, and the device would be useless.” Q had once instinctively understood the inner workings of any device he cared to know about, including medical equipment. Already, the details of that knowledge faded fast, but he remembered enough to know he was right. Bone and dermal regenerators had limited functionality. Wounds too severe or too aged were untreatable using those means. Jean-Luc would get through this just fine, though, with help.

“No one for miles has that kind of technology,” Jean-Luc said, narrowing his eyes at Q. Suspicious as ever, the brat.

“How many miles?”

“Well. S’pose the clinic might have one,” Jean-Luc admitted. “They are five or six miles from here, on the edge of the town.”

Q sighed. He stood from his crouch and held out a hand to the boy. “Then we’d better move quickly.”

“Are you--you want to _carry_ me?”

“You can’t walk on it, remember? I’m stronger than I appear--probably. Hurry up.”

When their hands grasped palm to palm, Q momentarily lost his bearings as the universe around them shattered and, in an instant, reformed. Jean-Luc pulled himself up on his uninjured foot, none the wiser. Q brushed the lingering dissonance aside. He hadn’t quite expected that to happen, actually, but what was done was done, now, and he had more pressing concerns.

In the years to follow, Jean-Luc would laugh at Q, accusing him of whining and moaning about the walk all the way. Q suspected the accusation to be true, but all he remembered was the warm weight of Jean-Luc in his arms as he’d plodded one step after another down from the woods and toward the tiny, understaffed clinic in La Barre. That the clinic had a series of regenerators on hand was some sort of miracle. If Jean-Luc had suffered his tumble even three months before, he would have been out of luck. La Barre was a hard, technophobic place. Campaigning for modern medical equipment had been the work of many decades by dozens of activists concerned about the state of rural healthcare. (Not that Q had known any of that at the time, and not that he would have cared. He was only grateful, an hour after arriving at the door of the place, to see Jean-Luc’s thin leg made whole and perfect again).

Afterward, the boys lingered outside of the clinic. Jean-Luc put his hands in his pockets and scuffed his booted feet against the dusty road. “My Mama will be upset,” he said, gesturing at the large gash in his trousers.

“Less upset than she might have been,” Q remarked, unconsciously mirroring Jean-Luc’s posture. He’d purposefully made his own clothes similar in style and color. He knew he look the part, even if his bearing likely betrayed him as a stranger in a strange place. The question of _what now? _pressed at the back of his mind, but he ignored it. A Q was nothing if not adaptable. He was Human, now, and trapped in a new reality. He’d persevered in more difficult circumstances before and likely would again.

“Jean-Luc?”

“Hm?” the boy replied, his attention straying down the road, likely toward home.

“Can I walk home with you?”

Jean-Luc blinked at him, apparently not expecting the question. “All right. It’ll be dinner time, soon, anyway. You could eat with us, I bet.”

That was the first of many meals Q shared at the Picard family table. It was the first of many nights he spent hidden under the awning of the property’s shed, staring at the shifting shadows in Jean-Luc’s bedroom window until sleep took him. It was the first time in that reality or any other that he’d known, without a doubt, that he’d done something too wonderful and too terrible to ever, ever be forgiven.

\--

Q woke. That alone shocked him, that he retained enough awareness to recognize awake from unawake. Q woke, and with his waking came a primal, physical agony the like of which he had not felt in...well, perhaps ever. Every bone ground within him, every muscle felt smashed to nothing more than distorted lumps of tissue, bruised beyond reckoning. Q had heard the phrase “I feel like I’ve been hit by a starship” a few times in his mortal life, especially after an especially rowdy Academy party, but he’d never so viscerally understood the meaning of the phrase.

The ground--oh! So he wasn’t floating unmoored in the dead of space, after all--felt bitterly cold and terribly, _unfairly_ hard underneath him. He tried to move away from the chilly, rigid surface and regretted the attempt. Pain stabbed like knives throughout his body, speared by the dozens through every molecule of his being. How did mortal bodies manage to cope, knowing such pain was _always _a possibility, one moment of blunt trauma away? Q had always been rather a coward, in the past, afraid of experiencing pain as a result of any rash actions. Now, lost in the throes of torment the likes of which he’d never before experienced, he questioned that he would fear something so minor as a simple flesh wound ever again. 

Giving in to the pain, he made a sound in reflexive protest. Air whined through his lips as a strangled, breathy sob that he had not intended to utter. His lungs burned. 

For the second time in his long life, Q found himself considering death as preferable to his current state of affairs. He had been Human then, too. If Q had felt _this _level of pain at that time, fleeing the might of the Calamarain armies, he would have jumped out of the nearest airlock with no hesitation. A tediously spasmodic latissimus dorsi could not begin to compare to this.

Lost in the jarring, unpleasant sensations, Q had not initially been cognizant of anything else that might surround him beyond the ground on which he sprawled. The longer he lay there--wherever ‘there’ might be--however, the more sensory data filtered into his hazy awareness. The air around him felt pleasantly temperate. He could smell cooked meats and ripe fruits on the breeze. His mouth, comparatively, tasted foul. He didn’t know if that bit of information was related to his surroundings, but it felt notable all the same.

_I’ll open my eyes_, he thought. _That would be useful. And it should be simple enough. I do it all the time_. After some internal struggle, he managed to open one eye. The world around him swam, presenting only a mess of writhing color and texture that made his stomach flip. He groaned and closed his eye with a snap, nauseated, now, and no closer to understanding where he’d landed. 

_Landed being a good word for it, _Q thought, wryly. He felt rather like a felled bird, or perhaps the famed Icarus--either way, fallen from a great height. The latter more accurate, perhaps, if one considered the abundant power of M to be akin in heat and ferocity to the sun. 

Q’s fingers slid against the ground--it felt gritty, cool, like hard-packed dirt kept under a shade. Something solid and somewhat sharp pressed against his back, keeping him from lying completely flat. His spine twinged at the reminder of its current unnatural position. Q ignored its complaints. It could take a number along with every other part of his stupid meatsack of a body. _Get in line. Wait your turn. _Its turn for what, Q didn’t know. Thinking, especially in fully formed words, felt almost as arduous a task as opening his eyes.

“But I heard something!”

Q’s reflexively tried to lift his head up at the sound of the voice, speaking in easily recognizable Federation Standard. He heard--and felt--something crack in his neck as he tried to move. He groaned, another reflexive huff of air in response to the sudden spike in pain. He couldn’t seem to make such sounds with any true intention. Instead of moving or attempting to speak, he let his chin fall forward against his sternum once more. The grainy dirt felt awful, grinding against his cheek, abrading his already brutalized flesh. He took a shallow breath (ow) and tried to purposefully call for help. He managed another thin whine. 

“It’s absolutely bustling here, Wesley. There’s plenty to hear.” Female voice. Soft, amused.

“Actually, Doctor. I think I heard something strange, myself.” Male, adult, almost apologetic for disagreeing with her.

“See? Told you! Where do you think it was coming from, Commander? Maybe over there?” A child’s voice, and the voice of the first speaker Q had heard. Smug and curious, now. Excited, before. Q didn’t typically care for children, but he’d more than happily welcome the intrusion of this one child, now.

“I don’t--,” the older male voice began.

Q coughed into the dirt in an aborted attempt at another call to the speakers. His lungs protested and spasmed as his back once had a literal lifetime ago. These strangers spoke Standard. One had the title of Commander, the other of Doctor. If Q had any luck at all, these people would be good to him. If not...well, they might at least put an end to his suffering and hopefully do it quickly. Q’s perspective shifted abruptly, the pain drifting off into a fuzzy sensation that could only mean impending unconsciousness. 

Footsteps, three pairs. Running toward him in a great ruckus, stirring up the dust.

A gasp. Fingers against his pulse points, pressing far too hard (ow, ow, ow). The buzz of a medical tricorder, far too loud. He could barely make out their continued conversation over the sonic feedback left ringing in his ears. 

“What on earth could have done this to him?” 

“Commander, keep Wesley back, please!”

“But, Mom, I just wanna--!”

“Come this way, son. Come on. Let your mother work.”

“My god,” the doctor muttered under her breath, her fingers trailing over the fabric of his uniform. Under the pressure of her hand, the fabric felt cool and sticky against his skin. “He’s Starfleet.”

Q opened his mouth, perhaps to respond with something like ‘_well, duh_, _Beverly_’ but the cold point of a hypospray hissed against his jugular, and with that the previous promise of unconsciousness became blissful reality. 

\--

At the Academy, Q spent most of his days keeping Jean-Luc Picard out of trouble and getting himself into it. 

“This behavior must cease immediately, Mr. Hill. If you disturb my class one more time this term, I shall be forced to withdraw you.”

Q’s Xenobiology professor was a large, craggy-faced Howlite whose rock-like form towered over Q by several meters. Even in the brief time Q had known the professor, Q had failed to make a positive impression. 

Dr. Jiltz found Q to be too damn caustic, perhaps. Or maybe it was just the fact that Q couldn’t manage to get through so much as one session of the Howlite’s course without falling asleep.

“I understand, professor,” Q said, nodding along with exaggerated sympathy that utterly failed to come off as genuine as he intended, “However, I’m sure if you were to look at my work so far--all the busy work and the never-ending quizzes, I mean--you will find that I am absorbing the material more than adequately.”

Jiltz’s rocky lips ground into a downward tilt with a sound like boulders dashing down the steep side of an unstable mountain. “Indeed, Mr. Hill. You are, in fact, the highest ranking pupil in the class. Your work is always submitted in a timely manner and well done.”

Q felt his annoyance settle then, very clearly, on his Human face. He hoped that the Howlite’s lack of familiarity with Human body language might help to smooth over the social faux pas. “Then, frankly, I fail to see the problem.”

Jiltz’s lips twitched again, this time grinding into what Q--much more naturally adept at reading interspecies nonverbals than most Academy cadets--read as a wry smirk. “You snore. Loudly.”

“Ah. I see.”

Later, Jean-Luc appeared at Q’s side as easily as Q had once been able to pop in and out of observable existence. “You look terrible!” the other young man accused, poking his friend in the shoulder as they walked together toward the dorms. “What have you been doing?”

Q yawned, his jaw cracking. “Sleeping.”

“But you have Xenobiology this period.”

“I know. And I think you’ll find ‘had’ is a more accurate descriptor than ‘have.’”

Jean-Luc sighed. “Oh, Q. Another one? This is the second class they’ve dismissed you from this term alone! You’ll never be able to keep up with the rest of us at this rate.”

Q’s jaw clenched. Falling behind Jean-Luc was _not_ an option. Keeping his progression in step with the future Captain was the _only_ reason Q was here--here, at the Academy, here, on Earth, here, in this alternate time stream that he had created solely for the sheer privilege of being near the man and--

“Q? Are you all right?”

Q swallowed thickly, reminding himself firmly that Human-ish bodies required oxygen. He gulped in a few harsh, steadying breaths despite the pressure rising in his chest. “I think I’m dying,” he rasped out, much to Jean-Luc’s amusement.

“Oh, please, Q, not that old trick.” 

Q reached out, grasping Jean-Luc’s forearms as tightly as he could. His scarred digits scrambled for purchase, but once made, he clung like a limpet. Jean-Luc’s shorter frame became his lifeline, the only thing keeping his knees from buckling entirely as he continued to struggle for air. The open quad felt absurdly oppressive and far warmer than necessary. 

Jean-Luc’s expression of fond bemusement shifted into outright alarm as his friend went pale and sweat-soaked, gasping like a fish. 

“Q!” Jean-Luc snapped, at a loss. “Stop this!”

Jean-Luc’s words pulled Q right out of the spiral he was in. He took a deep breath and then another and, once he had enough accumulated energy to accomplish the feat, sneered at the other man. “Well excuse _me_ for--for suffocating. I’m so sorry if my near death experience is putting a damper on your day!”

Jean-Luc blinked and chose to play into Q’s irritation, seeing as leaning into the emotion seemed to be helping him cope. “You’re not dying. You’re...making a scene. Come on. Let’s sit down over there. Under that tree.”

They sat, Jean-Luc having to ease Q to the ground in a manner that reminded them both strongly of that fateful afternoon in which Jean-Luc had helped Q lower himself down from what--at the time--felt like the tallest tree in all of France. Q’s hands had been swollen and slick with blood, then, ravaged with rope burns. Jean-Luc had taken the lead that day, balancing Q and himself against the rough-barked trunk as they descended it inch by inch, certain that at any moment one of them would lose his balance and both of them would fall to their death. 

“Do you remember--” Jean-Luc began, but he stopped. Perhaps he knew what a foolish question that was. How could Q possibly forget the day that had very nearly crippled his hands for life? “I never thanked you, properly, for that day on the tree.”

Q frowned. He still appeared waxy-pale and slick with sweat, but he was breathing easy, now, and color returned marginally to his cheeks as the old memory surfaced. “Of course you did. You said, and I quote, ‘Q! You saved my life! Thank you!’ Several times. In between all of the ‘Q, I’m sorry! Please don’t be angry with me’s.”

Jean-Luc grimaced. “You _were_ very angry. I thought you’d never speak to me again.”

Q shrugged. “It hurt, is all. I don’t like it when things hurt. It makes me irritable.”

Jean-Luc nodded. “Yes. I know.”

They sat together, close as peas in a pod, and let silence fall between them for a while. Q had stopped rasping, and soon enough he started to fidget, never one to sit idle for long, especially in a state of silence. He pulled up great tufts of grass from the lawn, weaving the leaves into tiny braids with a look of fierce concentration on his face. 

“What was that?” Jean-Luc asked, when he absolutely could stay silent on the matter no longer.

Q made a face, not daring to look away from his tiny floral creations. “I don’t know.”

“I think you had an anxiety attack. Or a panic attack. I’m not really sure of the difference.”

Q shook his head, dismissive. “Human bodies are fragile in the stupidest of ways. I’m fine.”

“Something must be wrong. You can tell me about it. Is it the classes? Because I know it’s important to you, doing well, and if you’re having trouble with the material--.” Q’s clear, scathing affront made Jean-Luc smile slightly. “All right, then. What is it?”

Q sighed and drew up his long legs, resting his forehead on his knees, hiding his expressive face from Jean-Luc’s knowing eyes, though whether consciously or not, Jean-Luc wasn’t certain. “I don’t care about the coursework. It’s all ridiculously simple. I could pass every class in this institution of so-called higher learning with ease.” 

“Then what?”

“You didn’t make it in, the first time.”

Jean-Luc frowned. Q knew he didn’t like to be reminded of his initial failure. Receiving that rejection letter had been a terrible shock. Jean-Luc had always been so certain of his place at the Academy, so convinced he would breeze his way with ease toward the stars he loved so dearly. 

“I have to make sure you succeed.”

This statement, plaintive and softly spoken, made Jean-Luc’s irritation bleed into softness. He placed a hand on his friend’s back, soothed by the steady beating of the other man’s heart (still organic, back then) against his palm. “You don’t have to worry so much. My professors like me well enough. I’m doing fine in my classes, especially in Archeology.”

“Archeology won’t get you onto a ‘fleet ship, Jean-Luc. Not in a way you’d like.”

“You don’t know that. I might enjoy being aboard a science vessel.”

“No!” Q jerked up, meeting Jean-Luc eye to eye.

Jean-Luc slid his hand from Q’s back down his arm, gripping Q’s wrist like he’d done a thousand time before when they were mere children. “Or maybe not! Q, it doesn’t matter.”

“It does! You’re going to be Captain, Jean-Luc. And not the Captain of any old ship, either, but the premier ship in Starfleet. The _Enterprise_!”

Jean-Luc snorted out a small laugh despite himself. “The _Enterprise_? That old thing?”

Q shook his head. “A new model, same name. You’ll be historic, Picard.”

Jean-Luc wrinkled his nose at the formal use of his surname. “You’re so strange, sometimes, Q.”

Q sighed, all fervor suddenly draining out of him. He fell backward, resting in a slump against the trunk of the tree they’d come to sprawl under. “Yes, I suppose I am.” 

“I’m glad you want me to succeed. I want you to succeed, too. That’s what friends want for each other. But I can do my work on my own. If you’re sacrificing your own well-being for me--all those late-night study sessions, all that networking with the Starfleet officers on my behalf--it’s too much pressure for you on top of your own responsibilities and needs. You have to stop.”

Q sneered at him, sullen and unconvinced. 

Jean-Luc squeezed Q’s fingers gently before letting the man go, putting some socially-appropriate distance between them. “You can’t put me before yourself, Q. It’s not fair to you or to me.”

Q closed his eyes, shutting his friend out and effectively ending the conversation. What use was it to discuss these things on such a micro level? Q had already put Jean-Luc Picard before an entire universe. Putting Jean-Luc’s academic interests before his own at the Academy seemed negligible, by comparison. 

Jean-Luc, perhaps realizing from earned experience that he’d get nowhere further with the discussion, sighed and followed his friend’s example as he, too, sprawled against the truck of the sturdy tree. “Fine. But at least promise me you’ll apologize to Dr. Jiltz and get yourself back into Xeno. I’ll help you talk to the professor. But no more sleeping at your desk, you have to promise.”

Q sighed as dramatically as possible. “Fine,” he had agreed, and that was that. 

\--

Q woke. It shocked him slightly less, the second time. Beverly Crusher, for all that she was grating to his nerves and _terrible_ for his peace of mind regarding the fidelity of his spouse, was a damn fine doctor, no matter how alternate the timeline might be. 

He didn’t seem to be restored to the peak of health, however. At least the pain had faded to a distant memory, likely kept at bay with some sort of drug. He felt free and floaty, instead. It reminded him, just a tiny bit, of his days as a member of the Continuum, untethered and at ease in the vacuum of space. 

“I think he’s awake.”

The voice came as if from a long way away, a mere echo of syllables that could potentially be words, if he tried to make them so. Q felt pressure against his limbs, could just make out a figure in medical blues prodding at what was, probably, his own body parts. The spectacle struck him as highly absurd. He giggled.

“Everything's all right, Dr. Hill. You’ve been under strong sedation for a few hours. You may feel groggy.”

He felt _high_, actually, but he supposed that was all much the same thing. He wanted to respond, say something back to the nurse with the tight line of concern between her brows, but speaking seemed too much an effort, so he decided against it. 

He saw copper-red, and even drugged to the gills he had a moment of pure panic. Was it M, back to taunt him already? A swinging curtain of red hair swept aside and up as Beverly tied it away in a practical ponytail. Her eyes were kind. It was...odd, to see Beverly Crusher look upon him with such soft eyes. Usually, in the previous timeline, she’d been annoyed by his presence, and interminably smug at his often-found comeuppance. He had resented her, and the feeling had been returned with interest. In the current timeline, their meetings had been infrequent, awkward, and stiff. They had the kind of relationship one might reasonably expect between two people who loved the same man much more than either of them ought. It probably didn’t help that, technically, in this timeline Q had gotten Jack Crusher killed. And it didn’t help, either, that, technically, Q had _won_\--he had Jean-Luc, and she did not.

Now, and her smile radiated a genuine, if muted warmth. Q wished she’d shown such a good bedside manner that day--a literal lifetime and one universe ago--when she’d tended to his wrenched back. Oh, but Human bodies were the worst. 

Q blinked slowly, realizing belatedly that Crusher was talking to him. 

“--or that?”

Apparently sensing his confusion, she tried again. “Can you feel this?” He waited for whatever he was meant to feel. It didn’t come. He frowned at her, wondering if perhaps her smile was intended to throw him off the scent. Maybe she was toying with him, after all, playing out some sort of cruel joke. The way her brows crinkled just slightly in concern seemed to disprove that theory, however. For all that she was so nutty about the theater, the good Doctor wasn’t much of an actress.

“How about that?”

Again, nothing. Q felt a bubble of panic rising in his chest, persistent despite the state of calm haziness his drugged brain wanted to maintain. 

Crusher put a hand against his cheek. He could feel _that_, though the drugs made her touch oddly difficult to bear. His cheek tingled under the pressure of her fingers, too warm. He had a suspicion the light touch might have hurt him, actually, without the meds’ interference. “It’s all right,” she assured him, matter-of-factly. “We expect some loss of sensation with this medication. We’re going to check again in an hour, after the effects of the painkillers has dulled somewhat.”

Q had a feeling that--despite the fact that she apparently _wasn’t_ lying to him outright out of spite--she wasn’t telling him the whole truth, either. Talking still seemed an awful lot of effort, but Q opened his mouth regardless, ready to demand answers. 

“Why...hoped?”

Crusher pulled away from him, her confusion clear. Q would have given his head a clearing shake if only he were able. Instead, he blinked rapidly, twitching toward the doctor in his attempt to reach out. He wet his lips with a clumsy tongue and tried again. “Why hoped? What--.”

Q’s eyes went wide. The words he wanted all felt leagues out of reach. What left his lips was not what he wanted to say. Frantically, he marshalled his thoughts, forcing his usually largely visual and pattern-based musings to take on verbal form. _Am I thinking this? Are these the words I want to use? _Yes, they were. He could ‘say’ it all fine in his mind. _What’s wrong with me_? He thought, repeating the phrase mentally a few times before trying to make the thoughts become language past his lips. 

“What--?” He floundered, stuck. He’d experienced what Humans called having words ‘on the tip of my tounge’ before, but this was something deeper, more pervasive. 

Q’s fingers snagged against Crusher’s sleeve. His fingers felt heavy, he could hardly get them to do as he wished any more than he could marshall his own fumbling mouth. _M did this, _he thought, panting for breath as familiar panic pressed against his sternum, causing his mechanical heart to grind. _That bitch! That malicious, malevolent, malcontented M! _

He couldn’t breathe. He hadn’t had an attack like this since that long-ago day at Starfleet Academy. He hadn’t _allowed_ himself. He couldn’t seem to fight the impulse, now. It was too much, too fast, oh, gods, how could she have destroyed him so utterly. To break his delicate mortal body was one thing, a horror in and of itself, but to take away his voice, his words! Mortals were so limited. Only a very few Federation species had any concept of telepathy, and even those were but fumbling children compared to the constant connection of the Q Continuum hivemind. And now, now M had taken it away, his one means by which to communicate with--with. _Jean-Luc_, Q thought, practically screaming in his mind, desperate that his psi-null Human spouse somehow heed him and come to his aid. _Jean-Luc, come put this right_! 

Q heard and felt the hiss of a hypo-spray for the second time that day. Silence and blackness soon followed and Q felt glad of the respite. 

\--

Consciousness prodded at him like a stick in the eye. He could only ignore it for so long. Slowly, his rational thoughts drifted to the top of the pool of water in his head that had once been his perfectly serviceable--if frustratingly limited--Human brain. He opened his eyes, though doing so took an unprecedented amount of effort. He tried, instinctively, to move. To lift his head, to raise his hand. To _move._

“W’s? Can’t progress,” he croaked, his voice an uncoordinated slur. He could see no one nearby to hear. And, besides, those were not the words he’d intended to say. He wanted to know why he still couldn’t move.

“It’s all right, Q,” said a familiar, beloved voice. Q heaved a small sigh of relief. It didn’t matter if his body and his words were broken beyond repair. Jean-Luc was near. Q managed to turn his head slightly, just enough to look up at the man. He could see that Jean-Luc’s hand was wrapped around his own, but he couldn’t feel the expected warmth, the pressure. 

“Jean-Luc. It’s...it’s. Hello,” Q said, just to speak. He watched as Jean-Luc’s expression tightened. Unhappy, but not surprised. He’d been briefed on the situation, then. 

“Whatever is happening, we’ll resolve it,” Jean-Luc insisted. His steely resolve reminded Q very strongly of many accumulated hours spent in a lifetime that no longer existed--Captain Jean-Luc Picard, standing tall and unwavering against a force he did not, could not, fully understand. Q tried to give his husband’s hand a squeeze. He had no idea if he managed or not, but Jean-Luc swallowed hard and pulled their joined hands up against his own chest, held more directly in Q’s immediate line of sight. “I have you.”

A flicker of medical blue caught Q and Picard’s attention both. Jean-Luc turned eagerly toward Dr. Crusher. Q’s eyes flicked her way. He wished someone would think to prop him up into a better position. The idea that his shattered body couldn’t possibly hope to so much as sit up in that moment did not occur to him.

“Hello again, Quinton,” Beverly greeted. She always insisted on using Q’s full (fake) first name instead of ‘Q,’ probably because it never failed to make him grimace in obvious distaste. For all she continued to bait him with its use, however, her expression was as gentle as it had been before. Beverly Crusher was many things--few of which Q easily admired--but she did possess a wonderful bedside manner, as it turned out. He felt at ease to see her. 

His ease was short lived.

“We should talk about your condition.” Beverly looked down at the PADD in her hands, swiping through what Q could only assume were his medical reports. “I know you aren’t able to answer any questions, right now, so I won’t bother asking any. What I can do is make some educated guesses of what happened based on the state the Commander and I found you in. You appear to have been dropped from a substantial height. As a result, you suffered extreme trauma to most of your body. You sustained several broken bones in your limbs and blunt-force damage to your skull and facial bones--most of which we’ve manage to knit back together, now. I’m afraid there will be some scarring and some concerns about lingering weaknesses in the bones, overall; we can discuss that in detail later. The important thing is that we’ve repaired most of the most brutal structural damage, and we hope to attend to the more minor breaks once your body has adjusted to the trauma experience and the accelerated recovery we’ve provoked.”

She waited patiently for some sign of understanding from Q. Q looked up at her. He had no words to use, after all, and his face felt too numb to be certain of his expressions. 

“Continue, Doctor,” Jean-Luc said for him.

Beverly cleared her throat awkwardly and did as ordered. “Our greatest concern now is, of course, your aphasia. And...and the paralysis.”

Q closed his eyes. He could be sure of that ability, at least. He was absolutely adept at opening and closing his eyes. Everything went obligingly dark. He felt a brush of dulled pressure against his cheek, the same tingling sensation he’d felt when Dr. Crusher had touched him there, before. Opening his eyes again, he saw Jean-Luc leaning over him, the man’s fingertips outlining the line of Q’s cheekbone in a gesture that, for Jean-Luc, was markedly tender. The man did not much believe in public displays of affection, especially while either or both of them was on duty. 

_Of course, this is a special case, _Q thought to himself bitterly. _Being as I’ve been reduced to nothing but a static, silent meat sack. That’s apt to make anyone feel demonstrative, I suppose_.

“We’ve performed a few cranial scans, and from what I can see in the readings, you appear to have suffered some damage to the Broca area--the vocal center of your brain. It’s not extensive--we don’t expect any further bleeds or complications--but it has had a definite effect, one that there is little we can do to alleviate, at the moment. It appears to be what we call a non-fluent form of aphasia, which means that you are struggling to find the right words to express yourself. Your comprehension seems intact. All we can do is wait and monitor the situation regularly. The brain has amazing abilities of self-regeneration. This might resolve itself with time.”

_Might_. Q had a feeling he would come to hate that word.

“The paralysis is a bit different. The...fall...you suffered bruised your spinal cord in the cervical vertebrae--that’s up in your neck. The bruising is moderate, and we’ve already made progress in easing some of the inflammation. However, even a minor bruise to the spinal cord can have a serious impact on the body--and you should expect several weeks or even months of recovery time after the bruising heals.”

“And what are the symptoms of this type of injury, in the long term, aside from the paralysis?” Picard asked, direct as ever. Q felt especially glad for that trait in the man, in the moment.

“Difficulty breathing, for one. Q, you may not be able to feel it, but you’re currently on a ventilator. The device is on your left and right sides, inserted directly into the lungs and between your ribs. If you start to struggle to get in air, you should push the call button, ok?”

Q sighed. “Suffocate,” he said. 

Beverly just nodded, taking that for the weary agreement Q had intended. “You’ll also experience a loss of control over your bladder and bowels.”

Q closed his eyes again briefly, shutting that out. _Human bodies are disgusting_, he thought. He’d been inhabiting a meat-and-bone bag of water for forty-five years, now, and he’d never gotten used to the humiliation merely _existing _could cause. 

“We have a system for that,” Beverly assured him. That assurance did not help, but he was grateful she didn’t feel the need to expound on the details. 

“We’re also going to be keeping a very close eye on your blood pressure and temperature. Your body will struggle to regulate itself as it normally would. If it becomes a problem, we’ll discuss treatments and options at that time.”

“Is that everything?” Jean-Luc asked.

“Yes. Probably. Quinton, right now, we have you on a very strong painkiller. I want to start easing you off the drug. It will help us get a better idea of your current range of feeling.”

No communication, no control over his body, utter bodily humiliation and, now, the promise of pain to come. _M _does _know me very well to have devised this punishment_, Q thought. She could not have possibly wounded him more deeply or thoroughly, save for lashing out at Picard himself. And that, Q fervently hoped, she wouldn’t dare do. Alternate timeline or no, Jean-Luc Picard was a very important man to the continued flow of the universe. He had to follow his path, untouched and (aside from several critical, immutable points in timeline) unharmed. (Q tried very hard, every day, not to think about the Borg.)

_It’s different with me, _Q thought, unhappily. _I am an outlier. A strange intruder in this life_. _M could have killed me and not caused so much as a ripple in the larger pattern of existence_. _The universe would keep spinning. _

The disastrously diverted path of the Continuum civil war did not, in that moment, occur to him.

Q wished he could move. He wanted to roll over on his side and curl up tight. He preferred to sleep that way. It always helped to block out everyone and everything, separating himself from the larger world. Q was no stranger to emotional extremes, even before he was mortal, though the emotions of a Human and the “emotions” of a Q were vastly different things. He had fallen victim to deep depressions many times in his human life, especially. Living was difficult, after all. This, however, was beyond the pale. How could he possibly rally from _this_?

Jean-Luc’s fingers ran gently through Q’s hair, palm brushing his forehead with the repetitive motion. Q could only feel a scattered, staticy tingling in response, but it was better than nothing at all. “I’ll stay with you,” Picard promised. 

“No. You...work,” Q argued, sharply. _Don’t take your position so lightly, Captain. I worked so hard to get you in that chair! _

“You’re needed on the bridge, Captain,” Beverly added, gently, though whether or not she knew she was echoing Q’s uncommunicated thoughts, Q couldn’t tell. “I’ll contact you with changes as they occur, I promise you.”

Jean-Luc’s answering frown could have melted the warp core. He nodded, a single jerk of his chin. Jean-Luc understood the weight of his duty, even when he didn’t much agree with it. “Very well. I’ll return when I can.”

Q wanted to reach out to him, wanted to tell him _everything_, for once. He wanted to explain his own sordid history. He wanted to expose M and inform anyone who would listen just how dangerous the M Continuum could be. He wanted to share the secrets of how to defeat them, to bring the entire lot of them to their knees one by one. It was that impulse that brought to light exactly _why_ M had made especially sure to take away his voice. He had no hope of sharing anything that he knew or helping the _Enterprise_ at all. Picard and his crew would simply have to muddle through on their own.

“Jean-Luc,” Q said, instead, and meant _I love you_ and _please be careful_. 

Jean-Luc smiled at him--a tight, forced expression--as he left the medbay behind.

“All right, Quinton,” Beverly said, tone alarmingly brisk. She reached up high and clicked a few buttons, apparently tapering off the flow of drugs into his bloodstream. “Let’s see what you can feel.”

\--


	3. Chapter 3

As Q remembered it, Jean-Luc shouted a warning in the seconds before the glider hit the trees. The force of impact threw them both from the small vehicle, and they landed in a sprawl, saved by the clinging branches of the tree that had doomed them.

Q complained of pain in his neck for weeks afterward, his muscles left rigid and strained by the resulting whiplash from the crash. He bothered Jean-Luc over it for days and days, insisting the other boy make amends for his “horrifically amateur” flying skills.

Q hardly mentioned the state of his hands, though, even when Jean-Luc had first held those bloodied, shredded fingers in his own, eyes wide and full of regret. Even when the nurse at the clinic’s lips had gone white with tension as she passed the dermal regenerator over Q’s wounds again and again to little avail. Even when the last wrappings had been removed six weeks on and Q had held a hard rubber ball in his grip and only barely been able to keep it there as the attending doctor tugged it away. Even when his medical assessment came back, years later. Even when his acceptance into Starfleet Academy hung in the balance because of the weakness in his mangled hands.

He complained about the wrenching of his neck for _ages_, bringing it up even years after the incident was far behind them. He dredged up the minor pain as one disaster in a long list of complaints leveraged against Jean-Luc during their frequent, superficial arguments. “Jean-Luc, you _owe_ me,” he’d whine, grabbing at the back of his own neck meaningfully.

But he never mentioned his hands.

His hands had saved Jean-Luc’s life. As far as Q was concerned, some pains were more precious than others. It was a price he paid happily. There was no reason to complain.

\--

The pain came on him slowly, but it was no easier to bear for that. It started as a prickling ache, then built up to a hot stabbing sensation, as if he was being repeatedly pricked through with a thousand burning blades. The agony made him want to writhe and flail, but he could not. He could, however, moan his objections. As the intensity rose, he sobbed and screamed about it, too. 

“It’s okay!” Beverly Crusher, his _torturer, _cried out, repeating the useless statement so many times that her words lost all meaning, practically as incomprehensible as the drivel that persistently left his own lips whenever he attempted to scream and rage at the doctor and her staff for putting him through these useless trials. 

_She loves this, _Q thought, uncharitably. _She’s been waiting years for this opportunity, ever since I took Picard away from her clutching little claws. Ever since her husband died because of me. She’s more vindictive than M could ever be and I hate her, I hate her, I hate her. _

Beverly ran her tricorder over every inch of Q’s body, making note of where his nerves sparked with pain, recording exactly where he could feel the sensations and to what extent. “This is good, Q,” she assured him all in a breathy rush. Her face shone almost as red as her hair, flushed with the exertion of moving as quickly through her analysis as possible. “Just a few more seconds. I’m nearly done, I promise. I’m so sorry.” Q ignored the deep sincerity he could hear in her voice. Perhaps the vindictive doctor was simply a better actress than he had credited.

The tricorder gave a rapid beep of completion and Beverly lunged immediately forward to the standing device over Q’s head. A few clicks and something warm rushed all through Q’s veins, leaving his muscles weak and numb in its wake. The total lack of feeling was now an absolute blessing instead of a bone-deep terror. He almost hoped he’d never feel anything ever again. Such complete numbness was highly preferable to the only other alternative.

He stopped screaming and fell into a sporadic pattern of pulling in wet, desperate gulps of air. Beverly came round and ran a soft cloth over his cheeks. The cloth came away damp with snot and tears. More humiliation, then. 

“It’s over,” Beverly said, her voice soft. “It’s over. There you go. Breathe. We won’t have to do that again, I promise. You did very well, Quinton. I know it was terrible, but it’s a very good sign, in the end. You have much more lingering sensation than I had expected. We’ll have to manage your pain until you’ve healed more, that’s all. Then, as we wean you off the medication, you should experience a healthy return of feeling. It can only get better, from here.”

Q choked out a string of nonsense words, but even the nonsense was too mangled to hear. 

Beverly stroked his hair, an exact mimic of the gesture Jean-Luc had made before. It was as soothing at her hand as it had been from his husband’s, much to Q’s chagrin. Stupid, touch-starved Human bodies. Stupid, wayward Human sentiment.

“You’re going to feel a bit drowsy, now,” Beverly said. “It’s all right. You need to rest. Just give in to it.”

Q’s vision went all dark around the edges, closing in. 

“You’ll get through this, Q,” Beverly’s voice said, losing itself into silence as Q fell into unconsciousness. 

\--

There were days when, as children, Jean-Luc Picard and his friend Quinton “Q” Hill put the entire village of La Barre on edge. 

“There they go again,” Madame La Roux sighed, rolling her eyes heavenward in despair, “I haven’t an idea how Mrs. Picard manages.”

Her companion, Mr. Leroy, only laughed. “Ah, Madame. Is your own childhood so far from you that you forget? I remember when you were but a girl around their age, Laura. You were a nightmare. Always pushing little boys into mud puddles and ordering everyone about.”

Madame La Roux stiffened, sniffing loudly. “I never.”

It was in that exact moment that a small, boy-sized cannon ball ran headlong into the Madame’s voluminous skirts. 

“Oof!” Q said, stumbling back with the force. Madame La Roux was a very large, sturdy woman. Q’s small, underfed body was no match for her strong thighs. “_Excusez-moi!” _The boy spat out the apology more like a preventive measure than with any actual sense of culpability. 

Madame La Roux grabbed the boy by the ear to keep him from running off. She peered past him. As expected, little Jean-Luc Picard hovered several feet away, watching the scene with wide eyes. 

“Jean-Luc,” the Madame growled. “Where is your mother?”

“I-in the market, Madame,” the boy stammered, eyes flicking over to his cohort, apparently seeking assistance.

Q made a face back. He was clearly in no position to bail out the youngest Picard son. The boy tried to pull away. Madame’s sharp nails held fast to the shell of his ear. 

“And why are you not with your mother in the market?”

Q, for all that his ear must have been aching, for all that he was in a precarious position, barked out a gleeful laugh. “She told us to go away and give her some peace.”

Mr. Leroy echoed the boy’s amusement with a smile. “Laura, do let him go. He’ll bruise.”

“I am tired of you boys running about in the square, bothering all and sundry.”

“Yes, Madame,” Jean-Luc agreed readily. He was a smart boy, much wiser than his friend.

Q, for his part, merely rolled his dark brown eyes. “We weren’t running about. We’re playing Starfleet Officers.”

Mr. Leroy hid his smile in his cup of espresso. “Oh yes?”

“Don’t encourage them,” the Madame snapped.

“Yes,” Q answered the older man, ignoring the harpy on his ear entirely. “Jean-Luc is the Captain. I’m the Science Officer.” He paused and looked the Madame dead in the eye. “You could be the vicious alien menace, if you like, Madame La Roux. All you have to do is wave your tentacles around and yell a lot.” The ‘so you’d be perfect for it,’ while not said, was implied.

The Madame snarled and gave Q’s ear a twist. The boy yelped in legitimate pain, startling back.

“Laura!” Mr. Leroy said, sharply. He slammed down his delicate porcelain cup and strode on his long, lanky legs around the cramped cafe table. The man put his bony hand on his friend’s wide shoulder and gave the Madame a sharp tug. “That’s enough.”

The Madame, after a beat of hesitation, dropped her hand.

Q hissed in pain, doubling forward, one hand clapped over his brutalized ear. Jean-Luc cast a worried glance toward the adults and scampered forward, pulling his friend near. He had to stand on his tiptoes to get a good look at Q’s head--though both were small for their age, the other boy still towered over him by a good six inches.

“That doesn’t look so bad,” Jean-Luc said, encouragingly. Indeed, despite the other boy’s loud, dramatic agony, his ear was only a bit reddened by the pinch of the Madam’s wicked nails.

“Go sit, Laura,” Mr. Leroy demanded. The woman did, still looking on the far side of murderous. Mr. Leroy ducked down a little to better meet Q’s eyes. “Quinton, perhaps you and Jean-Luc ought to play elsewhere, from now on.”

“Where?” Q demanded. “We’re not allowed in the market, anymore. And the librarian says if we show our faces at the library again, she will lock us in her office and make us organize all the backlogged patron records until we die. They don’t even have a computer in the library, you know. We’d have to do all of it by hand! With _paper_.”

Mr. Leroy felt his lips twitch. He worked hard to control the impulse to grin. “Perhaps you should stay home when Mrs. Picard goes shopping.”

Q sighed dramatically. “But it’s so _dull_ at the vineyard. All that’s there is mud and grapes.”

“Q gets bored a lot,” Jean-Luc said, tentatively. He’d always been a bit shy around the Headmaster. Mr. Leroy made a mental note to reach out to the less-boisterous boy more often. Jean-Luc was a very bright child and an excellent student. It would be a shame if he found himself lost in the shadow of Q’s overwhelming personality. (Mr. Leroy did not have the faintest idea, in those days, of just who overshadowed whom in that relationship--in later years, he would learn his lesson many times over, and regret it).

“Then might I suggest, Q, that you start to turn your attentions more to your studies and less to causing trouble?” 

Q sighed. “Of course you would say that. I always turn my work in on time, don’t I? And it’s always perfect, isn’t it?”

“I didn’t say your schoolwork, young man. I said your studies. Surely there’s _something_ that interests you, something you would like to learn more about?”

Q frowned. “I know everything,” he said, and Mr. Leroy was greatly amused by the certainty in the boy’s voice.

“No one knows everything, Mr. Hill. My advice to you? Find something you are interested in and dedicate yourself to it entirely. Put all of your efforts toward something bigger than yourself.”

Q’s eyes looked to Jean-Luc and stayed fixed there for a long beat. “I’ve found it already.”

“Then start putting some effort into it. And stay out of the village unless you are accompanied by Jean-Luc’s mother, all right?”

Q and Jean-Luc nodded dutifully, as was expected of them. 

Mr. Leroy patted their heads and sent the two children on their way, never quite expecting the impact his advice would have on the young Q’s approach to Jean-Luc’s future. Dedication, entire. Q could do that. 

\--

Q woke gasping. Two nurses flanked him immediately. One he recognized as Ogawa, the other--a short, dark-skinned Human man with a bald head--he did not know. Perhaps he’d never been aboard the _Enterprise_, in the original timeline. Perhaps Q had simply never deigned to give the man his attention. He’d never be sure of all those small, inconsequential changes from one universe to the next. 

“Dr. Hill,” Nurse Ogawa said, voice steady as her hands worked at his sides. “You’re experiencing a spasm. It’s not unexpected, but it has dislodged the ventilation system we installed. I need you to try holding your breath for me for a few seconds.”

Q panted shallowly, eyes wide, body screaming for want of proper air.

“Dr. Hill,” the unknown nurse said, his voice a gentle rumble. “The next time you take in a breath, hold it for us, please. We must reset the device, and your lungs need to be full and still.”

Q closed his eyes and, after a few more gasps, did as told. His lungs ached, burning with the pressure of it, but he held on to the air. He could hear, though not feel, the nurses at work. The device hissed air--his precious air!--out briefly, then clicked over and locked into place once more.

“All right, Q. Let your breath go.” 

He let the breath out and pulled another deeper, noisy lungful in. And then another and another, his panic easing as the air came in and went out easily.

“Wonderful,” Nurse Ogawa praised. “Good job. You should be all right now, Dr. HIll.”

“I’ll stay and take his vitals,” the other nurse said. Ogawa nodded her agreement and went off, presumably to deal with another patient.

The nurse tabbed a few buttons on his PADD, making the notes as stated. After a few moments, however, the man looked around himself and leaned forward, into Q’s direct line of sight. Q did not find the bright light of the man’s dark eyes comforting in that moment.

“That was close, Q,” the man said, and Q immediately recognized him as an M. Not an M that Q had ever met, he was pretty sure, but an M all the same. Q tried to jerk back and away from the entity, but his body, of course, wouldn’t move.

_I’m practically in a cage_, Q realized, with a thrum of adrenaline. He could hear the monitors attached to him give a soft beep, probably noting the sudden rise in his pulse. 

“Now, now. Let’s keep that in check. We don’t want to cause any alarm for anyone, do we?” M’s voice was a steady, low purr. He seemed entirely unfrazzled. And, indeed, why should he be nervous? The M might be in enemy territory, but he was unrecognized there. His power outweighed the combined might of the entire ship’s complement so utterly that Q--had he been in a position to be anything but terrified--would have found it utterly laughable. 

Q took a few slow, deep breaths, reigning in his galloping heart. 

“Better,” M said with approval. He reached up, fiddling with something out of Q’s area of sight. Q wondered if M had changed her mind, if she was going to have him killed, after all.

“I’m just checking in,” M said, which did not actually put Q’s mind much at ease. “She sees it all, of course, but she’s very busy. She can’t watch you every second, can she? So, here I am, gathering information for a report. How’s it going, Q?”

“Traitor?” Q asked. “Monsters in the cabinet! _Monsters in the cabinet._”

M’s smile was absolutely ghastly. “That’s good to hear.”

_Bastard_, Q thought. “Monsters,” he said, voice dripping poison as his words could not. 

A click from above. “Sticks and stones, Q,” M said, brightly. “Have a good afternoon.”

And then M walked away. All Q could see was empty space and the high ceiling of the infirmary above. He could hear something new, however. A soft, persistent hiss. Something sparked in his veins, beginning in his arms and leeching out over his whole body. Not the numbing burn of the painkilling drugs. It felt...cold. 

Q managed a sharp, loud gasp of shock as his blood seemed to turn to ice inside of him. Where once was utter numbness, now he felt icy agony, like shards in every capillary. His useless, motionless body suddenly jerked up off the bed of its own power. Q’s mind went momentarily white. He half expected to find himself in the limbo reality in which he’d once--a lifetime ago--shown the old Captain Jean-Luc Picard the tapestry of his existence.

Then sound and light came crashing back to him, hitting with the force of a proton missile. 

“He’s seizing!” someone yelled and Q had enough presence of mind to think _Oh, is that what this is?_ before losing awareness entirely.

\--

“I’d like to say it was an accident, Captain. But with Dr. Crusher and Ogawa’s testimony and after seeing the readings--I’m sorry, but it’s my professional opinion that this was a deliberate attack.”

“I want a full investigation. Look through crew records, interview whomever you need to. Find the person that did this and put them immediately into the brig until I can speak with them personally.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And Lieutenant Yar…?”

“Sir?”

“You are encouraged to use whatever force is required. But be careful. There is a real possibility that whoever did this has a close association with the...that M woman.”

“Yes, sir.”

Q blinked hazily, following the sound of distant voices back to the world of the living. He could feel his body, dimly, in all the nerve endings that Beverly had woken up before. He ached in those places, and probably ached all over in others he could not yet feel. Painkillers, again, but at a much lower dose. Or perhaps the pain was simply so bad that it surpassed what the drugs could handle, and he was feeling the remains of the pain that was left. Neither thought was especially comforting.

His brain felt...detached. He wanted to speak, even just to vocalize his nonsense words, but he couldn’t think clearly enough to try. Instead, he swallowed against the clinging dryness in his mouth and forced his eyes--blurry, everything was so blurry--toward the red-garbed man at his side.

Jean-Luc didn’t notice him, at first. His attention was above Q’s head, perhaps watching the monitor on which his vital signs were displayed. His mouth pulled down into a dark frown, his brows drawn together. Q used to make fun of him for that particular face. Used to threaten the man that it would stick that way, some day, if he kept it up. The Dour Leader of Men expression. Q did not often find that stony expression fixated on himself; it was a face reserved for difficult moral quandaries and warlike alien races seeking to attack the Federation ‘fleet. It was not an expression one should wear while in the vicinity of one’s spouse. Q found he did not like it.

Q croaked out a sound that might have been a word in some language or other, if one were feeling especially generous.

Jean-Luc’s eyes darted to him immediately, the dour expression disappearing, masked over with a look of forced calm. He didn’t try to smile again, for which Q was grateful. He couldn’t bear to see such a lie on the other man’s face.

“There you are. I thought you’d sleep right through my visit entirely,” Jean-Luc said, as if he’d dropped by Q’s bedside and found him taking an inconvenient midday nap. “Dr. Crusher said you might be in some pain. Is it manageable?”

Q wanted to shrug. Or say ‘yes.’ Instead, he muttered a soft, meaningless word (“yeti”) and left it there.

Jean-Luc seemed to take that for a positive response, anyway. Q would have liked to think that it was merely a sign of their deep personal bond, that Jean-Luc could read him even without language or body, but mostly he suspected that Jean-Luc had assumed and happened to assume correctly.

_I should have had myself made into a Vulcan or some other telepathic species_, Q thought, grimly. _We could be speaking right this minute, if Human minds weren’t so damned limited_.

But M would have worked around that, he was sure. M would have done whatever it took to render him thus--weak, motionless, silent. Fully aware, all the while. For the very first time it occurred to Q that, Dr. Crusher’s insistent optimism to the contrary, what had been done to him could very well be permanent. The thought of living another sixty to eighty years--the average modern Human lifespan--in his current state made his mechanical heart whir in new panic.

“Easy,” Picard murmured, startling as the monitor above Q’s head gave a warning beep. “It’s all right, Q.”

There. The only way that Q could even try to truly communicate with anyone--the racing of his heart, belying the depth of his fear. 

“I’m sorry,” Jean-Luc said, which made Q’s churning thoughts screech to a confused halt. “I don’t understand what has happened, exactly, but I’m no fool. I know this is my fault, somehow. This is no different than any other crisis in our lives, Q. The same as it’s been since the day you rescued me from the woods or-or the day we crashed in those trees. The day you took that Naussican blade in my stead. It’s always you, throwing yourself on the grenade for my sake. And this time--this time, I don’t think the sacrifice was worth it. Do you?”

_Yes!_ Q shouted in his thoughts, revolted by the mere suggestion that Jean-Luc’s life, his destiny, would ever fail to be worth any cost. _Yes, you idiot. You short-sighted, pompous Human being! It was worth it. You’re always worth it. I destroyed an entire reality for you, you fool, you dumb bastard. And I’d do it again! _“The disorder!” Q snapped, raw-voiced. “Ego! You. Worth! Wasted!” The monitor joined its screeching voice to his, blaring out the evidence of his pounding heart, his rushing blood, his anger and frustration clear for all to witness.

“All right! All right! Stop--just stop. You’ll exhaust yourself.” Jean-Luc’s hands pressed against his shoulders. It took Q a moment to realize that they were there because he had managed to raise them, if only a few inches. 

Q fell back, panting hard, as exhausted as Picard had warned. Still, he felt his lips pull into a wry smile. He’d moved. Hardly at all, and at great physical cost, but he’d moved, all the same.

“Dr. Crusher!” Jean-Luc called. Beverly appeared as if she herself was a Q, popping in and out of existence. She listened patiently as her Captain explained Q’s minor victory. Her smile was much smaller than Q’s, but still there. Still real. 

“That’s a good sign,” she agreed. “But let’s not push it, all right? Quinton, keep still. You don’t want to aggravate the damage by trying too much too quickly. I want to check on the bruising, especially, and make sure that it’s not irritated. However, that process will be difficult for you. Let’s wait for the morning. Until then: Keep. Still.”

_‘Keep still.’ Easy for you to say_, Q thought, sullenly. But he’d follow the woman’s orders and rules. He’d do a lot, if it meant reclaiming control of his autonomy once more, even a tiny part of it. 

“There was a stranger here,” Picard said, once Dr. Crusher had checked Q’s vitals over again and went on her way. “They injected an unknown substance into your IVs. It--you had a seizure. Beverly was concerned that it might--.”

Q cut him off. “Understood.”

“Yes. Well. You seem to be all right, I think. It’s-it’s difficult, when we can’t just _ask_ you.”

In truth, Q felt mostly tired and sore. His vision was still persistently blurry, but he chose to blame that on the tiredness. Perhaps it would go away, soon. Besides, it hardly mattered. He had no way of indicating the change to anyone. And he could still see clearly enough to know one person from another. It was only the details that got lost, about a foot from his face. 

_Myopia_, Q thought, tiredly. _A condition that would have hit me sooner or later with age, most likely. _

In the grand scheme of things, this added loss was beneath his interest. It said much for what he’d suffered so far that the potential loss of his sight felt like a drop in an already overflowing bucket. 

_To think, a few weeks ago, everything was perfect. Jean-Luc was so excited by this assignment. And I was, as well. Finally, I’d gotten him to where he belongs. And now...well. Now it’s different. So is life_. 

Mortality had taught him a few scattered lessons. The unpredictability and sheer shittiness of mortal existence was one that had stuck. 

\--

Q and Marta stared each other down. After the longest pause in history, Marta put her hand out, waiting, between them.

Jean-Luc nudged his friend in the side--gently, though; even six months on from their encounter with the Nausicaans, Jean-Luc treated him with kid gloves and a delicate touch.

With a dramatic and gusty sigh, Q shook Marta’s hand. “Try not to die out there,” he offered, glibly.

Marta smirked at him. “Of the two of us, who’s already tried dying once?”

Q shook his head slightly. That hadn't counted. 

As far as Q knew, Jean-Luc and Marta remained in contact long after that parting of ways. Q only reached out to the woman once, just after he and Jean-Luc had tied the knot. He sent her an old fashioned paper postcard with an illustration from _Peter and Wendy_ on the front. On the back he wrote, in a twisted scrawl,“Stars must look on forever, but I’m taking an active part.”

\--

Eventually, through the ship grapevine, it came to Q’s attention that the crew had, as they had once before, solved the mystery of Farpoint Station. M had not chosen to reappear afterward. The crew had simply been free to travel freely afterward, the strange entity’s origin and motivations an unanswered question.

Q knew better than to expect that the crew of the _Enterprise _would never see the woman again. It was only a matter of time. All he could do was wait and try not to dread the moment overly much. 

\--

They put a feeding tube into his stomach and Q despaired of ever feeling like more than a low-rate cyborg. And then, as if summoned by the comparison, the android called Data appeared at his bedside, his blank expression not hiding the spark of curiosity in his yellow eyes.

Q had always suspected more of something akin to Human emotion from the machine than his peers did. Long before Data’s later experiences with the booster chip, Q saw feeling in the machine who wanted so badly to be a man. Even now, in the early part of this timeline, he could sense the android’s compassion under the surface. Data was, in his own unique way, concerned.

“Good morning. I hope I am not disturbing you.”

Q blinked. How could anyone disturb him, anymore? His days were filled with nothing but silence and long spans of utter boredom, the mind-curdling monotony broken only by unexpected visits such as these. Typically his visitor was Dr. Crusher--short visits, very professional--or his husband--also short visits, painfully reserved and full of unspoken words on both their parts. Data’s appearance was completely new and therefore very interesting. 

“In speaking with Geordi, it has come to my attention that it is customary to make regular visits to the injured, especially when one is closely associated with the person in question. I know that we are not yet closely acquainted, Mr. Hill, but Geordi insisted that you would still appreciate the gesture.” 

_But didn’t insist so much that he felt compelled to be here himself, _Q thought, with some amusement. As far as he could tell, most of Jean-Luc’s new crew felt awkward around him. Not unexpected or, indeed, unwanted. Q had a reputation that preceded him, and he had that reputation for the express purpose of keeping people out of his business. 

...Data was not people, in the strictest sense. 

“As you are unable to communicate with me your desires, I would ask that you blink once if you wish me to stay and twice in succession if you wish me to go.”

Q huffed a small, suppressed laugh. No one had thought to try that one, yet, not even Q himself. Obligingly, he blinked once. 

Data sat down on the stool next to his bed. “Thank you, Dr. Hill. I would like to express, as I was not able to before, that it is an honor to meet you. I have read much of your published work and have found it engrossing. It is not often that I discover a mind--even in Starfleet--which seems able to process thoughts on a level similar to my own.” He paused. “I hope that did not sound arrogant. Geordi has told me that there are times when I can appear to be so. If it helps to alleviate the impression, I am unable to experience the emotions required to fall prey to egotism.”

Q laughed again, a little stronger than before. Data had ego aplenty, just as he had enormous compassion and a strong sense of loyalty to his fellow crew members. It was such egregious folly for anyone--Data especially--to think otherwise because the android did not--could not--express those emotions in the same way as his organic counterparts. There was a time, in another reality, when Q had found Data’s desire to experience humanity as something grotesque. Now, he understood completely what would drive a powerful, intelligent being to take that step down the evolutionary ladder. Q felt more fellowship with the man than he ever had before. He smiled at Data, wide and warm.

“You appear to find what I say funny. I do not see the humor, myself, but I am gratified that you are enjoying this conversation, despite your inability to participate in it.”

Q twitched a finger. It was a skill he’d been working on for the past few days. Data’s mechanical eyes followed the slight motion with ease and he gave a short nod in response.

“I will continue speaking. I have learned from the Captain that you are interested in music. I myself have been programmed to play the violin. I have done this in an attempt to mimic a literary figure whom I admire. Are you familiar with Sherlock Holmes?”

Q blinked once. 

“I have all of the collected works of Arthur Conan Doyle and several pastiches in my databanks. Would you be interested in hearing one of these tales recited? My voice modulation program allows me to mimic character voices with extreme detail.”

Q blinked again, vaguely bemused by the offer but also--strangely--touched. He had spent many years among mortal beings in his years living as a Human. In La Barre, the people had treated him as an oddity, rather like a Changeling child from one of their quaint fairy tales; and, perhaps, they were not entirely incorrect. At Starfleet Academy, he had been rendered to little more than Jean-Luc Picard’s surly shadow; he presented, as a student, as a credit to the program’s academic rigors who was, unfortunately, abysmal at making personal connections for himself (though he had formed plenty of positive relationships with high-ranking officers and influential academics on Jean-Luc’s behalf, instead). While stationed on the _Reliant_, he’d hardly registered on anyone’s radar at all. Aboard the _Stargazer_, his reputation had been that of the new Captain’s prickly best friend, a man with an ego the size of Jupiter, at least. That opinion had not changed much after Jack Crusher’s death, even when Schuster--much more tolerant of Q’s idiosyncrasies than Crusher had been--stepped in as CSO. 

The crew of the _Enterprise_, he knew, were a strange and wondrous breed of people. Perhaps so strange and wondrous that even he could...find a place among them, in this reality? The idea boggled the mind compared to the dreary memories of his experiences in the previous timeline, but it was one that he felt almost ready to entertain, now, all things considered. 

_If the brass don’t decide to ground me, first_, Q thought. Jean-Luc had--hesitantly--brought the subject up during his last visit. The fact of the matter was that while Q could, thanks to the family-friendly nature of the new _Enterprise_ ship--stay aboard as Jean-Luc’s invilid husband, he would not be able to retain his previously slated role of Chief Science Officer in his current state. The potential loss of the position hurt Q more than he could have anticipated. He’d always used his own ambition as a foothold for Jean-Luc’s, before. But now, Jean-Luc was exactly where he should be, and Q had almost been looking forward to settling into a high-ranking position by his spouse’s side. _Now what will I do? Lie in our quarters for hours on end, doing nothing, my mind slowly going to rot?_

It troubled Q that while he was _nearly_ certain that Jean-Luc would never let such a horrible thing happen to him, he couldn’t be absolutely sure. Jean-Luc had much more pressing matters at hand, now, after all. He was Captain of the jewel of the fleet. Q would only slow him down. Another extra layer to M’s punishment, that. After all those years of championing for Jean-Luc’s future, Q could not share the hard-earned prize with him. Worse, there was now a strong possibility that Q might be used as a lynchpin to bring Jean-Luc’s promising future tumbling down. 

_I’d die first_, Q thought, and he meant it. He had seen the threads of Jean-Luc’s possibilities laid out before him, once, when he was still part of the Continuum. Captaining the _Enterprise_ was Jean-Luc’s only path to true happiness. Q could not cost him that, not after everything. Nevermind what the loss of Picard’s historic captaincy would do to the larger universe. Q would shudder to think of it, if he could shudder at all.

Data’s voice finally pierced the miasma of Q’s churning thoughts. The android had--perhaps predictably--chosen to start in chronological order with _A Study in Scarlet. _Q closed his eyes and allowed Data’s reading to wash over him, to carry him away from reality and into the relative comfort of a world of pure, uncomplicated fiction. 

\--

The darkness encroaching steadily in his vision was not mere illusion. He had tried to deny the fact for a few days, desperate to pretend that M’s most recent addition to his interminable sentence had failed, but he couldn’t ignore the evidence right in front of his own face. 

He might have gone quietly blind, unnoticed, if not for Beverly Crusher. Q was, despite himself, starting to regard the woman with a certain level of genuine respect--though he did think she could stand to touch Jean-Luc slightly less whenever the Captain came to visit the medical bay. 

“Quinton?” Beverly asked one morning. She’d stopped by briefly to check his vitals and move on, but something about him had arrested her attention. “Quinton, are you having trouble seeing? You’ve been squinting, lately. I thought maybe the lights were too harsh for you, but your pupils are reacting as expected, and even when I had Ogawa dim the bulb over your bed yesterday, you still seemed dazzled.”

Q waited--impatiently--for her to stop talking and then slowly and deliberately blinked once. The whole medical complement and Jean-Luc had taken up Data’s simple, silly communication tool. For the most part, it worked well.

Crusher made a soft sound of concern and pulled up her tricorder, passing it over his eyes. “No damage to the eyes themselves. We might need to do another brain scan. I’ll be right back.”

When Beverly reappeared, Jean-Luc came with her, hovering at her elbow. Q could only tell it was Jean-Luc due to the smear of red uniform and the familiar shape of his bald head. “Hello, Q,” he said, in his most stiff, Captain-y voice. It was how he always sounded, as of late. Distant and professional to a fault. Q found himself aching for Cadet Picard or even little Jean-Luc from La Barre, that troublesome child who would have never been anything but open and earnest with Q, even in a crisis. 

_Is this a crisis, anymore_? Q wondered. It had all dragged out for so long. Every new obstacle seemed a pittance. Q was too worn down to get overly excited about anything, good or bad. Even the prospect of losing his sight completely, perhaps permanently, barely registered. It made so little difference. He had already drifted (been pushed) a thousand miles or more away from the one person in the universe he loved. _M should have been the one to first receive the Humans in the old timeline, not me_. _She’s so blessedly cold, so wonderfully cruel. She never would have been so stupid as to fall in love with a mere mortal man. What a strange new universe _that_ would be!_

“Hi,” Q said back. He hadn’t bothered to speak in ages. His voice sounded rough and beyond exhausted.

Jean-Luc took his hand and Q could feel it, a little. Could that be enough? Would that minimal sensation be enough to keep him sane for the rest of his mortal life? Perhaps. 

The scans were long and dull. The machine droned in Q’s ears uncomfortably, causing phantom feedback to bounce around in his hearing for long minutes afterward. When they finally pulled him out, Q could barely keep his useless eyes open, he was so bone-weary. Seeing that Jean-Luc intended to stay at his side for a while, however, Q clung to his consciousness. He kept his gaze fixed on the other man as best he could. In recent days, the medical staff had finally allowed that Q’s bed be set up at an angle while he was awake. He felt slightly more normal for the newly won ability, for what sparse comfort that was worth.

“We’ve made no progress on finding the culprit who poisoned you,” Jean-Luc said, his frustration clear even through the careful mask of his professionalism. “We know he was posing as a nurse. But it’s rather as if he...disappeared, right off the ship. I have a suspicion that he did, in fact, do exactly that. Whatever this M business was, Q--whatever you did--.”

Q flinched at the accusation he could hear in Jean-Luc’s voice. (He could do that, now. Could flinch, could twitch, could sit up with extensive aid; those tiny victories felt like the difference between being alive and being dead.) “Sounds. Sounds,” he said, trying to apologize, something he rarely did if he could help it but now--now that he couldn’t say it--seemed vital to give. 

_I’m sorry my actions had these consequences, _he thought. _I’m sorry that M followed us into this place I made for you and me. I’m not sorry enough to have let you die without me, to not make this universe into existence in the first place. But I am sorry_.

“There are six Vulcans on this ship,” Jean-Luc said, apropos of nothing that Q could place. “It’s not customary for their race to use their telepathy outside of cultural rituals, but there is one Ensign who has expressed an interest to...translate...on your behalf.”

Q blinked--in surprise, not communication. Realizing his mistake, he twitched his head in an approximation of a shake, and he blinked twice in succession. _No_.

“No? Why not? I thought you’d jump at the chance to be heard--in a manner of speaking.” Jean-Luc’s frustration was even clearer, now. It might yet shatter his constant, rigid mask. Q hoped it would, in fact. 

_I have no desire to be interrogated_, Q wanted to say. _You only want answers from me, not communication. Just like the old days, Picard. You always demanded to know what I was “up to.” You never accepted that I just wanted to be _near_ you. Before this life, I thought that cold streak was inherent in you, something ingrained by how you grew up or how the Academy shaped you. Now I know it’s just this job specifically that put it in you--and that’s a shame. _

“If I am to make any progress against this M threat at all, I must--.”

“_Threat_,” Q hissed, mimicking more than speaking his own thoughts. “Won’t.”

Jean-Luc’s face shuttered down entirely, hiding even the frustration away. Q missed that small concession to real emotion, the missing like a blade slid directly into his mechanical heart. “The Ensign will be here tomorrow at 0900. You will meld with her and answer my questions. That is an order, Lieutenant.” Jean-Luc stood up. “Dr. Crusher, please send your findings from the most recent scans once they are available.”

“Wha--of course, Captain,” Dr. Crusher said, watching the man go with a flummoxed expression. 

Q hissed softly. “Eerie sin,” he said to Crusher, petulantly, to hear his own voice. “Bullheaded.” 

Beverly’s expression went sad and troubled, reading into his tone if not his garbled words. “He wants to protect his crew. And you.” She came toward him, hand outstretched. Gently, she placed her hand on his shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “I know we’re not friends. And I know why. But despite our differences, I do hope you know how much he loves you.”

“Loved,” Q said, letting his head fall back more firmly against the pillows. His voice dragged out of him, tired and worn as thin as the delicate wiring spiraled deep inside the innards of a warp core. Yes. He knew. “Lost victory. ...Gratitude.”

“You’re welcome,” Beverly said, and left him to sleep. 

\--


	4. Chapter 4

\--

Q woke to someone in his face, pulling up his eyelids. Everything was a deep, foreboding black. 

“Dark,” Q said, in a shaken whisper. “Falling star? Falling star? _Falling star_?” The monitor screeched as his pulse skyrocketed, lost to panic.

“All right! All right. It’s Dr. Crusher, Quinton. Calm down. It’s all right.”

“Dark,” Q said, forcefully. “Dark.”

“I know. Your pupils aren’t reacting to the light at all. I expected this, based on the scans.”

_Who cares what you expected? What can you do about it now that it’s happened? _

He had felt ambivalent about his sight, before. He regretted his apathy now that the sense was well and truly gone. How had he ever possibly thought that the loss would not be terrible? The darkness seemed to eat at every part of him. It was everywhere, pressing in. As the minutes passed, he kept picking up strange sounds, utterly unable to place them without his vision as a guide. How did Georgi LaForge live in this manner?

LaForge. He had a visor, didn’t he? It helped him see, after a fashion. Better than normal Human sight, one might argue. Q’s hands twitched, trying to raise them up to his eyes, to mime the visor device, to ask after its use. 

“Stop. Stop,” Crusher demanded. He could feel her hands on his own, holding them down. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”

“Dark,” Q snarled back. “Pest. Hate you.”

“Same to you, Lieutenant,” Beverly said, sounding very annoyed. Q went still. “_Thank_ you.” 

Q swallowed thickly, twitching his head around as best he could to follow all the _noise_ in that place. He hadn’t noticed the cacophony of sound, before, but now it seemed all that mattered, some of the only clear input he could receive, now that touch was a vague memory and sight had been obliterated entirely. 

“The scans show extreme nerve damage between your eyes and the visual processing center of your brain. I imagine that was the intended purpose of the substance that was given to you by the, the...M agent. It’s not something I can fix. A nerve specialist might be able to with invasive surgery. I’ve called as many contacts as I have. I’m waiting to hear back.”

Q listened. He had nothing else he could do but listen. 

“Dr. Crusher? I am Ensign T’Letch. The Captain has requested my presence to conduct a mindmeld.”

Beverly pulled away from Q. Q felt oddly bereft at the lack of touch. 

“You’re right on time, Ensign. If you don’t mind, I think we should wait for the Captain before--.”

“I’m here.” A pause. Q could imagine Jean-Luc’s gaze passing over the scene before him, his mind making the logical deductions. “What’s happened?”

“I’m afraid the damage to his ocular nerves has gotten too extensive. His pupils are nonreactive.”

“He’s blind,” Picard summed up, hollowly.

“Yes.”

_But I can still hear, _Q thought, grumpily. _And I’m still _here_, too._

“Ensign, initiate the mindmeld, please.” Jean-Luc’s tone brooked no argument. Q felt the Vulcan woman step forward, her fingers pressing against his temple. 

“_Away!_” Q snapped at her, flinching back.

“Sir?” the Ensign asked. Of Picard, not of Q.

_Mortal beings! _Q thought, fuming. _They talk a big talk about equality and acceptance. But lose a few key senses and physical abilities and suddenly everyone is treating you like furniture! _For the first time in a long time, Q missed his cosmic powers. He would love to smite every single solitary soul in the room. 

“Proceed, Ensign. Q, if you don’t cooperate, I will hold you down myself.”

“My mind to your mind. My thoughts to your thoughts,” the Ensign murmured, though the invocation largely went ignored by the others in the room.

Q turned his sightless eyes in the direction from which Picard’s voice came. He bared his teeth at the man, growled out a low string of nonsense that, for all that it was gibberish, clearly represented some of the best examples of multilingual profanity he could muster. 

“Jean-Luc,” Beverly said, timidly. “If he doesn’t want--.”

“He’s only being stubborn,” Jean-Luc said, sharply. “And childish. And _selfish_.”

_Selfish! I’m trying to keep you from sticking your nose into something your puny mortal brain can’t comprehend! I’m saving you all, you hopeless man. I--_

Q’s thoughts shattered as a foreign presence suddenly broke through his train of thought, flooding his mind, seeping into every hidden corner of his most inner self. _Violation_, Q thought, body twitching into a full shudder. 

‘_My apologies’ _T’Letch said, pulling back slightly. _‘I had expected your mental defenses to be stronger.’_

_‘Everyone I spend any real time with is a psi-null as a rock. I’ve never bothered to build any,’ _Q replied, unable to keep from responding. He didn’t know how to keep his thoughts away from her prodding, metaphysical fingers.

T’Letch pulled back further, politely. Like someone turning away while another changed clothes. Q scrambled for something resembling control, something to keep hidden the parts of himself he’d like to keep private. In the end, he thought of the old stone walls that bordered some of the fields of La Barre. He built them up, stone by stone, around practically everything he had. His secret past within the now dead Continuum, his childhood with Jean-Luc, every single thing he knew about the M.

_‘I see,’ _T’Letch said, when he was done and all that she could ‘see’ without restriction was Q himself, standing in an open space surrounded everywhere by tall walls. They looked much stronger than they really were, more smoke and mirrors than true substance. The Vulcan Ensign would barely have to breathe too hard to knock them down. Being relatively psi-null for decades had done nothing for Q’s once formidable mental prowess. _‘You truly do not wish to answer the Captain’s questions, then.’_

_‘I’ll answer what I want to answer. I won’t let you pull it out of me.’_

Some of his thoughts about this barbaric process must have leaked through with the words, for T’Letch--or, the representation of T’Letch that she projected directly into his mental landscape--gave a very Vulcan frown. _‘A mindmeld is not torture.’ _She said, tone entirely neutral. But Q could feel her tiny spark of irritation in the meld itself.

_‘It can be, and you know it. I didn’t consent to this. Jean-Luc is being his usual overbearing, self-righteous self. He’s always done this. He will always do this. He puts his ridiculous, limited concept of Just and Right above all else and damn the consequences. He’s the very image of Lawful Good.’_

The reference to Picard’s obvious alignment appeared lost on the Vulcan, which Q considered a shame. Vulcan culture could only be improved by the incorporation of tabletop gaming. It was, in fact, a delightful thought he planned to save for later to help wile away the interminable hours when next he found himself alone and unable to sleep.

_‘Do you wish me to communicate this sentiment to him?’_

_‘No. Maybe. No. It wouldn’t make a difference. I don’t want to fight with him, especially through you. If we must play telepathic telephone, I’d prefer not to let it devolve into a spousal spat.’_

_‘The Captain would like you to explain your connection to the entity called M.’_

Q had greatly missed the ability to mold reality to his whims. Within the mindscape that T’Leth’s meld created for them, Q had a similar power in his grasp again for the first time in many years. He gave his fingers a snap and watched with satisfaction as the empty, dim space filled up with structure and color. He patterned the faux-garden after the flower beds of Starfleet Academy. The squat stone benches, beautifully tended roses, and Aldarian skypods reminded him of many long afternoons spent in Jean-Luc’s company, studying together or simply enjoying each other’s silent--mostly silent, in Q’s case--presence. Q’s mental presentation sat down on one of the familiar benches and waved T’Leth over to follow suit. The Vulcan woman gave a short nod and sat on the far side of the stone slab, turning her body so that they might still speak comfortably, eye to eye. 

Q tilted his head up to the remembered sky and took a deep breath. _‘I’ve missed this_,’ he said, though he hadn’t quite meant to express the thought between them. He missed such freedom of movement, the ability to touch and see and speak. He missed the simplicity of the Academy gardens. He missed feeling like he had a purpose. 

T’Letch watched him with dark, thoughtful eyes. She seemed a bit out of place among so much lush greenery. Her people were of the desert, after all. But she was also Starfleet, and a Starfleet officer could adapt to nearly anything. Even, it seemed, Q’s mind. _‘The Captain has repeated his question.’_

_‘Tell him to fuck off,’ _Q said, rolling his eyes. _‘And don’t leave out a single syllable.’_

T’Letch blinked slowly at him, gone still as she apparently related the message verbally. Q could not hear her speak, nor any sounds from the outside world. His entire perception was anchored here, to the meld. _‘He says that that is not amusing.’_

Anger rushed through Q’s veins, warm and electrifying. The emotion propelled him to his feet, and he paced the stones in long staccato strides. _‘Amusing? Amusing! Of course it’s not amusing, _mon capitan! _I am _trapped_. I am _bound_ like, like Prometheus to the rock. I cannot speak! I cannot move! I can’t so much as breathe on my own! Why would you _ever_ presume that I might find any of this _funny_?’ _

T’Letch tilted her head to the side just so. _‘He would like to join the meld.’_

Q frowned, mulling that over. _‘It’s possible, isn’t it?’_

_‘Yes,’ _T’Letch agreed. _‘However, I wish to give you the choice. Would you like the Captain to join this meld?’_

Q’s puzzled frown melted into a wide smile. _‘I don’t say this often. But--Thank you.’_

_‘The sentiment you expressed previously possesses significant merit. You are a thinking, rational being whose personal autonomy should be respected. If it is within my power to honor that autonomy, I will do so. Shall I tell the Captain that he may not enter?’_

Q looked around at his admittedly shabby mental walls. _‘Can you...can you help me with these? I don’t want him to see it. Any of it.’_

T’Letch stood. _‘Yes, I will do that.’ _Q watched, amused, as the Vulcan woman’s presence seemed to split into hundreds of exact copies. Each T’Letch walked the length of his walls, trailing her fingers over the stones. Everywhere she touched, the craggy, amatuer structures took on added density and height. Truly impenetrable, now. _‘If you wish to access any of these spaces, I am able to create a gateway.’_

_‘Oh, I don’t think that’ll be necessary,’ _Q said. He couldn’t possibly allow Jean-Luc to see any evidence of their previous life together. And he wouldn’t share even a tiny bit of information about the M. Such knowledge in Picard’s hands would only cause problems, later on. It would corrupt the timeline far too much. No, his walls would all stay. The facsimile of the garden would suffice. _‘I’m ready.’_

Jean-Luc stood at parade rest, his hands folded behind his back, his chin held stiff and high. Q remembered that posture very keenly from their former days of living in the now dead reality. This was Captain Jean-Luc Picard prepared for a fight against an alien foe. Q’s heart clenched painfully at the sight. 

Q turned the course of his pacing and walked in three easy strides to his husband. He threw his arms around the man, buried his face in Jean-Luc’s neck, and clung on for all he was worth. ‘_Don’t move,’ _he murmured, voice muffled by the warmth of Jean-Luc’s skin and the cool fabric of his uniform’s collar. ‘_Please, let me. Please.’_

_‘Q’_ Jean-Luc breathed in shock. Slowly, his stiff posture melted away. His own arms wrapped around Q’s back, pulling him in. _‘Mon amour,’ _he said, all tenderness. _‘Oh, Q. I’m so very sorry.’_

Q swallowed heavily to keep the sobs rising in his throat unvoiced. He couldn’t fall apart with T’Leth’s patient, knowing eyes upon them. He pulled away reluctantly. He did not move far. Q ducked his head a little, pressing his forehead to Jean-Luc’s own. Their breath was not real, but it mingled between them, drawn from a memory of what had once been real. _‘I’m scared,’ _Q whispered, as he had what felt eons ago in their quarters. He had known something terrible was on the horizon. Their experiences in the old timeline had indicated it must be so. For once, Q did not savor the experience of being proven so empirically correct. 

Picard had thought it strange, then, that admittance of fear. Now, after Farpoint, after their encounter with the M, he surely understood its source. _‘You knew. You knew that M creature was waiting for us. ...For you.’_

_‘I can’t tell you anything,’ _Q said, with unusual forthrightness. _‘It’s too dangerous.’_

_‘Our lives are always dangerous. It’s part of the job.’_

_‘I won’t.’_

_‘Q,’ _Jean-Luc growled. 

_‘I can’t let her hurt you next!’ _Q shouted. His voice echoed off all the many walls, filled up the small garden with an eerie finality. Even T’Leth seemed unnerved, though she may have simply been reacting to the extreme nature of the emotional display. 

Jean-Luc slid a hand up Q’s bent back, cradled the man’s skull in his palm. _‘I must bring her to justice. I can’t do that unless I understand.’_

_‘You’d never understand. Not if you studied their every move for a thousand lifetimes. They are unknowable. Even to themselves.’_

_‘How? How do you know even that much? Who are they to you?’_

_Family, _Q thought, only to himself. _Kin. A part of my own essence, each. Strangers, now. Mysterious figures of shadow and stardust. Demons and gods a thousand times beyond my paltry Human mind and weak Human body_.

Q shook his head emphatically. _‘Nothing,’ _he said out loud._ ‘Nothing. Please, Jean-Luc. Forget her, and hope only that she’ll do the same of you in return.’_

Jean-Luc’s eyes were cold as steel. _‘How can I forget what she’s done?’_

_‘Why, Johnny,’ _Q purred in low surprise. _‘I never figured revenge for your style.’_

_‘Don’t tease me, Q. Not now.’_

_‘If not now, when? Once we leave this place, I won’t be able to do much more than wink at you, and that’s only if my aim is lucky.’_

_‘Q,’ _Jean-Luc warned, pained. 

Q kissed him. Jean-Luc wouldn’t like it, not with a subordinate standing so near, her eyes alight with muted curiosity, staring openly with that special disregard that only a Vulcan could manage. But Q couldn’t help himself. It might be his last chance to steal a kiss from the man he loved.

Jean-Luc, to Q’s surprise, did not pull away. He pressed into the embrace, returned the kiss with equal, desperate passion. When he finally did pull back he did so by mere inches. _‘What did you do, to anger her so?’_

_‘It’s already done. It doesn’t matter anymore. I would never take it back.’_

_‘But you did do something.’_

Q could allow him at least that much. _‘Yes. A long time ago, now._’

Jean-Luc toyed with a few stray curls growing over the edge of Q’s ear. He sighed softly, meeting Q’s eyes with a somber, apologetic expression. _‘And is it deserved, then? All of this?’_

Q closed his eyes briefly, thinking of exploded nebulas and shattered possibilities and the corruption of a omnipotent species...and a son--his beautiful son--who had never been born and now never would be. ‘_Yes. I think so. All this and maybe even more.’_

Jean-Luc’s simulated expression was hard to read when Q opened his eyes again. Not disappointed, as Q had expected. Not sad or angry, either. Perhaps...lost. Unmoored. _‘I don’t know how to fix this.’ _

Q smiled at him. _‘Then don’t, _mon capitan. _Save your efforts for bigger, better causes. This battle is mine_.’

_‘Alone?’ _They had never done anything alone in their entire lives, not since that first meeting in the woods. 

_‘Not entirely alone, I hope,_’ Q admitted. _‘I would miss you._’

_‘I shouldn’t have--have closed myself away. I thought it would make it hurt less for the both of us. I was wrong. I’m sorry._’

_‘You’ve never been much of a nursemaid,’ _Q agreed, amused. _‘That’s all right. That’s what Dr. Crusher gets paid for, isn’t it?’_

_‘No one gets paid on this ship; Humans don’t believe in money,’ _Picard reminded him, sharing the old joke with a small smirk.

_‘You know what I mean.’_

_‘Captain,’ _T’Leath broke in, levelly. _‘I am sorry, but this meld has lasted far longer than is typically recommended for a multi-mind melding. It would be wise to close the links soon or we all risk neurological side-effects.’_

_‘Of course. Thank you, Ensign.’ _Jean-Luc pulled Q into another, less intense embrace. _‘We’ll do this again sometime soon.’ _

_‘Good.’ _Q said, relaxing a bit at the promise. Sure, the Vulcan third-wheel was awkward, but it was worth it if only to touch and be touched in return, to see the light in his spouse’s eyes, to speak his thoughts with no limitations. 

Jean-Luc pulled away and turned to T’Leath.

_‘Wait!’ _Q cried. _‘LaForge. Tell Crusher that I want her to look into applying a similar visor to my eyes. And...and tell Data he should come by again. If he wants.’_

Jean-Luc’s eyebrows rose. _‘I’ll have Geordi report to sickbay himself, if you like.’_

_‘Yes, that’s perfect. He’ll know heaps more about the gizmo than Crusher, anyway. ...Thanks.’_

_‘You know, Deanna Troi has also expressed an interest in spending time with you. She believes that, as an empath, she may be able to communicate more easily with you than others might.’_

Q thought of the Betazoid counselor, of what he remembered of her from his previous life. Not so bad, as far as mortal beings went. She’d never quite approved of him, perhaps, but in those days none of the _Enterprise _crew had, not even Data. Troi was a compassionate, resilient woman with a quirky sense of humor hidden deep down. Her taste in men was objectively questionable (Riker and the Klingon? Honestly?) but that was hardly Q’s problem. _‘All right. Yes._’

Jean-Luc’s lips quirked into something approaching a grin. _‘Are you really so bored, Q?’_

_Lonely, _Q corrected to himself alone. Aloud he said, _‘They _are _your crew, Jean-Luc. As your husband, I should get to know them, right?’_

_‘_Very_ bored, then’ _Jean-Luc drawled with clear amusement. _‘I’ll send some of your staff your way, as well. I’m told they’ve made remarkable progress, so far. In what, I haven’t a clue, but I’m sure they’d love to report in.’_

Q tried not to let his anxiety show through. _‘How long before Starfleet pulls me from the department?’_

Jean-Luc’s amusement died as quickly as it had appeared. _‘I expect to be sent the official order in a few days._’ He stepped away from T’Leath and gave Q’s shoulder a squeeze. _‘It isn’t a permanent dismissal. As soon as you are back to full health--_.’

_‘Right,_’ Q interrupted. He didn’t want to hear such pretty lies. _‘The ever-tolerant Federation, showing its true colors, as usual.’_

_‘You’re in no condition to lead an entire science team,’ _Jean-Luc said, with no sympathy. 

Q took the opportunity to follow an old, childish impulse and kick the other man in the shins. _‘Says you. I don’t need a body or a voice to think circles around every single soul in that lab and you know it.’_

Jean-Luc hissed, barely resisting the urge to pick up his foot and hop around in agony, but he managed; such a gesture would be very undignified for a Starfleet Captain. _‘What I know or don’t know has nothing to do with it_,’ Jean-Luc said, tightly. _‘I’m only following through with the commands of my superiors_.’

Q grimaced with distaste. 

Jean-Luc softened. He gave Q’s nape a strong, familiar squeeze. _‘We’ll cross that bridge when it comes. Together. I promise you._’

Q let some of his surliness melt away. _‘I’ll miss you.’_ He admitted.

_‘I won’t be far, Q. Not ever._’

Abruptly, the meld broke.

“My apologies, Captain. I began to fear for the stability of the connection and felt it would be better to end the meld immediately.”

Jean-Luc’s voice sounded strained, cracking slightly under the weight of something intangible. “That’s quite all right, Ensign. Thank you for your help. You may return to your quarters to rest, if you wish.”

“Thank you, Captain. It was gratifying to meet you, Dr. Hill.”

_I’m sure it was_, Q meant to say. “Fine,” he said, instead. He had a headache and understood, somewhat, why Jean-Luc sounded so drained and tired. He did hope that they might meld again--but perhaps later rather than sooner.

“I think Quinton could also use some rest. And you, too, Jean-Luc,” Beverly said in her most no-nonsense doctor voice. 

“I’ll go in a moment. I’d like to sit with Q for a while.” The ‘in private’ was implied.

Beverly cleared her throat. “Oh, of course. Let me know if you need anything.”

A silence. Then, softly, from his elbow, “It’s just us, now. I should have said it before, Q, but--whatever happened that led to this, this _sentence_ you have been given...I don’t hold it against you. In your own way, I’m sure you did what you thought was right. You always have.”

Q, with great effort, lifted his hand a few inches off the bed. Instantly, familiar fingers wrapped around his own, presenting as a dull pressure and slight tingle to Q’s perception. 

“Whatever happens going forward, I would not abandon you. I hope you know that, at least. You saved my life, Q. Many times over, and in more than the literal sense. In all the universe, you are my greatest friend.”

Old, old words came back to Q in that moment. _Because in all the universe, you're the closest thing I have to a friend._ Q swallowed hard, fighting a sudden and unwanted rush of tears. In his wildest dreams, he had never expected for this life to lead to this. Even as he and Jean-Luc had grown up together in the Picard vineyards, even as they had spent their days together in the Academy practically stitched up at the hip, even as Jean-Luc had shared his fears, his dreams, and his hopes with Q night after night…he had not, when making his deal with the other Q, ever expected that his meddling could really lead to the precious gift he now had. 

“I’m sorry,” Jean-Luc said, a little baffled. “I didn’t mean to upset you.” Q felt a thumb swipe under his eye, catching an escaped tear before it could fall.

Q worked his tongue in his mouth for a moment, desperately missing words. 

“It’s all right,” Jean-Luc assured him, perhaps showing a bit of that deep, personal connection, after all. “I know. And I love you, too.”

\--

Geordi LaForge had a way about him that Q had never bothered to notice in their lives before. He was, first and foremost, a credit to his field--not as technically superior as Data, perhaps, but he knew his stuff. (It was a shame that Starfleet would likely waste his talent for so long in this universe as much as the last--keeping him at the conn instead of at the engines where he belonged). Secondly, when Geordi wasn’t predisposed to finding Q a terrible, day-ruining cosmic annoyance, he was...very kind. 

“Now, it’s going to hurt a lot the first few times. That’s the calibration process. It gets better, I promise.” Geordi’s fingers were warm and dry as he pressed the tiny nodes on Q’s temples. Q could hear the mechanical whir as the device clicked on.

The promised pain quickly followed. Q yelped, falling forward, pulling his hands up to press against the ice-pick stabbing behind his eyes. Geordi’s hands clamped around his wrists like vices, pulling gently down.

“I know, it’s real bad. Just hold on a bit longer. It’s all gonna be worth it, Q. It will. That’s it. You can scream, if you want, I don’t mind. Wow, yeah, all right. Really shake the rafters. I get it.”

As quickly as it came, the pain went. Q, unable to help himself, sagged bodily against the conn officer. Geordi didn’t flinch but held him upright, gently maneuvering the other man back against his pillows once Q’s breathing leveled off again.

“Okay! Not so bad for the first round,” Geordi said, brightly. “Why don’t we take a break--An hour sound good?”

Q moved his fingers into a shaky thumbs up--a slightly better alternative to the blink system, and a new development he couldn’t help but relish.

“I’m gonna go grab some lunch. I can come back and hang around, if you want…?”

Q--after a bit of fumbling--gave a thumbs down. Geordi ought to get away from Q and the damned visor calibrations for a while, spend some time with Data and his other real friends.

“You sure?” Geordi said, and he sounded...concerned? “I can grab a sandwich and be right back.”

Q tilted his head at the man. It was a useless gesture, perhaps, without his sight, but ever since he’d regained limited range of motion in his neck, he’d taken full advantage. 

“What?” Geordi asked. Q suspected he was smiling. “I’m not a noisy chewer or whatever you’re worried about, you know.”

Q just sat, unsure how to express himself. 

“Okay, okay. I’ll leave you alone for a while. But I’ll be back in an hour for the next round, all right?”

Q managed a jerky motion that was mostly a nod. Geordi patted Q’s shoulder as he passed him by. 

“Hey, Dr. Crusher, I’m going to the replimat. I’ll be back after lunch.”

“Okay, Geordi. See you soon.” Q listened to Beverly cross the medbay. She walked softly, but that didn’t matter. His ears could pick up a lot, these days. “Well, Quinton. That sounded like it went...well.”

Q snorted.

“How’s the pain now?”

Q pressed his thumb and pointer finger near each other in a circle. Zero. Once the stabbing sensations had stopped, the nodes hadn’t hurt at all. 

“Good. And how’s the rest? Is your back all right for now?”

A thumbs up, weaker than the last few. His limbs were getting tired.

Beverly’s PADD made a few soft beeps as she typed up some notes. “Excellent. Let’s do the whole list, okay, to get it out of the way. Then you can rest until Geordi gets back. Ready?”

Q waited, letting his silence speak for itself.

“Breathing?”

Thumbs up. He’d been off the ventilators for two days, already, and hadn’t had a spasm since. He had to be careful not to take deep breaths too quickly, but otherwise everything seemed back to rights in that regard.

“Headaches?”

Q paused, uncertain. He’d had a hell of a headache that morning, but it had passed within a few hours with no trouble since. 

“Nothing since this morning?” Beverly clarified, apologetically. She was still learning how to communicate with him. Everyone was. Q tried not to let the obvious effort warm him to his toes--stupid Human sentiment.

Thumbs up.

“Your digestive signals seem to be waking up, so that’s good. If we can get you into a wheelchair in the next few days, we can start taking you over to the latrine when you need it.”

Q grimaced. Beverly’s soft chuckle was not as mortifying as it might have been once. They were sharing the joke, in a way.

“Can you feel this?” Q felt the hard pressure of a thumb swiping up the arch of his left foot. His toes curled reflexively, and he felt that, too.

Thumbs up.

“_Wonderful_,” Beverly cheered, with real enthusiasm. Often she tried to keep her emotional responses to his progress--or lack thereof--under wraps. Some victories, however, were impossible not to celebrate.

“And this?” Nothing. Thumbs down.

“Okay. That’s okay. Your right side might be a bit behind. It happens.”

Q doubted that was the whole story, but he let it slide. He had, in the last several weeks, learned rather a lot about the virtue of patience. ‘Wait and see’ would hardly become his life’s mantra--but there could be nothing gained by counting chickens before they hatched...or expecting massive progress where it might never come.

“You seem to be doing well with with your hands. We might work up to giving you LCARS access, soon. With a screen-reader, of course. I’d also like to set you up with a word processor. It’s possible the severity of your aphasia could be mediated using written text..”

Q sat up straighter at her words, unable to help the rush of hope. Could he communicate by typing out his thoughts? They hadn’t attempted it before due to his lack of fine motor skills. Now, the mere idea of it made his heart soar.

The monitor beeped, tracking the uptick in the whirring of that exact organ.

Beverly laughed softly again. “Don’t get too excited,” she cautioned. “It’s just an idea, and one I want to wait on for a long while. We should get the VISOR set up for you, first.”

Q yawned, abrupt and loud. 

“That’s all my questions. You should take a nap while you can.”

Q panicked as her steps started to retreat. “Stop! Stop.” He had something he’d been wanting to tell her for a while, and that moment was as good as any to try.

Beverly returned. “What is it?”

Q rallied the remains of his energies and lifted a hand, reaching out to snag her sleeve with a grasp even weaker than his usual. He gave the fabric a small tug. _Thanks_, _Bev, _he thought, doubting his intention would get through. _Sorry I called you ‘shrill.’ And turned you into a literal bitch. And--well, all of it, really_._ In my defense--well, nevermind. _“I--am. I’m--.”

Beverly’s hand slipped over his. “I don’t know what you want to say, exactly. But, you’re welcome, I think.”

Q offered her a smile and let her pull away and return to her duties with no more fuss.

\--

When Geordi returned, he didn’t do so alone. Q could feel the brush of Deanna Troi’s empathic resonance from across the medbay.

“Maybe we should come back,” Geordi whispered. “Dr. Crusher said that it’s important he rests as much as possible.”

“He’s awake,” Troi said back, a smile in her voice.

_Hey, no one said it was okay for you to read my emotions, Counselor._ Q thought, grumpily. He felt heavy and muddy-brained after his nap, not refreshed at all.

“And he woke up--how do you put it?--on the ‘wrong side of the bed,’” Deanna added, with definite amusement, now.

Q opened his eyes--for what little good that would do him--and sat up. Geordi stepped forward, helping to adjust his pillows to a more comfortable height.

“Sorry for waking you up, Q. Do you want me to come back later?”

Thumbs down.

“Okay. Well, if you get sick of this, let me know. We can take it slow.”

Q wanted to see now, immediately. He had no desire to work _slowly_. 

Apparently one did not need to be a Betazoid to sense his impatience. Geordi approached with soft-spoken words of encouragement--a blatant attempt to keep from startling Q with unseen touch, for which Q was pathetically grateful--and reactivated the calibration process for the second (and hopefully final) time.

This time, Q’s scream was aborted before it could even build up in his throat. Hands, too cool and delicate to belong to LaForge, held on to his own. With the physical sensation of the touch (muted, still, but much more now than simple static tingling) came a rush of overwhelming peace and calm. It washed the agony away like the rush of the tide washing away imperfections in a sandy beach. As the surge of calm drifted back, Q could sense that the pain remained, but it was softer, now, and far more bearable. He managed to merely grit his jaw against it instead of howling his despair like a beast.

“There,” Troi murmured softly, her hands and her calm drifting away from him. “Is it done, Geordi?”

“Yeah. Device indicates it’s ready to install. Q, you with us, man? You look kinda, uh...strung out.”

Q pushed the synthetic feelings of peace aside with perhaps more brutality than necessary. The effect had been appreciated, the intention obviously kind, but--. “Oh, Q,” Troi breathed, suddenly. “I am so very sorry. I wasn’t--that was very poorly done of me, especially after what--.” A pause as Troi marshalled her own reactive emotions and gathered her thoughts. Then, gently, “I apologize for acting without asking for permission. I shouldn’t have assumed you would be amenable simply because the effect was intended to be pleasant.”

Not so very long ago at all, Q would have dismissed the apology out of hand--and he would likely not have been especially kind about the rebuffing, either. Certain circumstances had a way of altering one’s perception, however. Q continued to feel very strongly about his personal autonomy; he _had _to defend it fiercely, in fact, just to feel like he was truly existing at all. That said, he knew the _Enterprise _crew well enough (both before and now) to admit that no member of Picard’s crew meant him any harm. This particular iteration of said crew held absolutely no animosity toward him at all, in fact. He was not a meddlesome, frightening burr buried deep in their tender skins, now. He appeared to them as the all-too-Human husband of their Captain--a intellectually brilliant, physically battered man who needed their help and deserved their respect. They were...comrades, of a type. Q could no longer afford to disregard the obvious benefit of building and maintaining friendships outside of the one fostered between himself and Picard. He required more--and these people were willing and able to provide. The least he could do was respond in kind.

“Forgiven,” Q said, softly, feeling his forgiveness with every inch of his soul and pushing it her way. Forgiveness, acceptance, appreciation and gratitude carried between them in a messy, cluttered mix. HIs words couldn’t carry the weight of his thoughts, any longer. But his feelings could, if he allowed them.

“Thank you, Q,” Troi said in equally soft response, and the brief contention was left behind them.

LaForge cleared his throat. Q, who had quite forgotten the man was still there, jumped. It was hard to find the involuntary movement especially gratifying, in that moment, especially when Q heard Geordi smother a soft huff of laughter at his expense.

“Sorry,” the man said, genuinely. “I, uh. Well, the machine is ready to install. We can do it right now, if you want. And you might want--it takes a lot of sessions to get used to the interface. It can be a big shock for folks who were once fully sighted. So, you might want to start the adaptation process sooner rather than later, you know?”

Q wanted to ask if the installation, like the calibration, would cause him pain. But, without T’Leth in residence, there was no way to ask the question in words. And he could not for the life of him think of how to communicate such a specific thought to Troi via emotion alone. He couldn’t even rouse up the sensation of fear at the possibility--he was becoming rather resigned to pain, these days. It was hard to fear something so prevalent in nearly every aspect of his day-to-day life. 

So, he just curled his fingers and presented the other man with a decisive thumbs up. 

“Great. Let’s give it a go.”

\--


	5. Chapter 5

The VISOR was an experience Q would not wish on his worst enemies--which explained why M had orchestrated its use. Though Geordi had tried his best to explain the physical impact of the assistive device, Q had not grasped the full implications of relying on a system that read, processed, and uploaded constant streams of unfiltered data directly into one’s brain at all times. Q knew, now, firsthand, why only a very few visually impaired humanoids in the Federation chose to utilize the damn thing. It was maddening and excruciating in the extreme. As a member of the Continuum, he been all-seeing in a very specific way. As a Q, he would have found the VISOR as easy to use as a sighted man looking through a clear pane of glass. Geordi’s description of “taking what you want and disregarding the rest” was par for the course when one of Q’s former species settled down and peeked into the entirety of the multiverse at once. As a Human with no previous training, however, it seemed a complete impossibility. Q’s estimation of Geordi grew with every passing day as Q suffered through the use of the wretched technology--to have come so far in life relying on such a stupidly designed bit of hardware was a sign of a strong character, indeed.

Q longed to be able to tear the VISOR apart and tweak its specifications into something less horrifically vile. But, of course, he could not. He required sight and motor skills to tinker so. 

Instead, he stumbled through it. He had no other choice.

“Another headache?” Geordi asked in sympathy practically every time he visited the medbay, which was daily, now.

Q could only sigh and flick his thumb up in positive response. Geordi had warned him that wearing the VISOR on a consistent basis caused intense strain on the mind. The Human brain was not intended to be privy to so many layers of overlapping sensory input, especially for hours on end. 

“You’ll get used to it,” Geordi assured. Q did not believe him, but he was learning the value of white lies spoken between friends.

In the sensory feedback, Geordi was recognizable due to his generally humanoid outline and the smear of glittering golden light that spread over right where his own VISOR must be. Beverly appeared as a similarly outlined humanoid shape with trails of fire around her head, her red hair taking on a more artistic vistage as the device recorded the hues and his brain misrepresented them utterly. Data body emitted a glow which Geordi swore was characteristic of many types of mechanical constructs. Troi radiated odd bursts of shimmering silver, like tinsel, which confused and frustrated Q for days before he realized it was a byproduct of her natural Betazoid biological processes--her empathic abilities left a mark in the air. Picard, dear Picard, would likely have appeared as dull and boxy as Riker (who had visited only once, and then only to report something to Beverly at a time in which she happened to be in Q’s line of sight) excepting for one thrilling detail. Every time Jean-Luc looked upon Q or spoke to him specifically, a bright, thrumming glow engaged under his sternum, exactly where his heart would be. 

Strange, sentimental nonsense. When Q was finally able to describe these depictions to Geordi via T’Letch’s patient translation, a flash of white teeth appeared briefly under the smearing gold of the man’s VISOR, indicating an especially broad smile. “Remember, Q, it’s your brain that coordinates all of the sensory input from the VISOR itself and turns it into something with meaning. Your brain knows the Captain is something special to you--so it translates his image to you accordingly in a way you’d understand. I see something similar when I look at my mother or my other family members for whom I care very much; I don’t think they would appear to you, a stranger, like they do to me.”

After said conversation, Q began to look at the world around him in a different way. He took note of features of the VISOR’s input he never had, before, having assumed it was all more of that excess, useless data that Geordi had explained he would learn to filter out. Now, however, Q discovered quirks in the system that seemed more deliberate in their purpose than he’d realized. Picard’s heart glowed for him, yes. He also had a thick, white ropy light that extended from his chest and moved (lengthening and shortening as needed) with his movements without constraint. It took a day or so of visits for Q to realize that the rope--like most ropes--had another end. And that end connected to Q himself. 

_Destiny_, Q thought, with some amusement. It was a thread of connection, a visual representation of how he and Picard were bound together in this new timeline. Q should have recognized the imagery ages before--members of his race could see such threads with ease, if they tried it, just as the Continuum could read what Human’s called “auras” to determine the state of what Humans considered their “souls.” 

T’Letch found these minor curiosities fascinating in the extreme.

“_What does the VISOR reveal, when you look upon me?_” she asked him one evening. They were together alone in the meld. T’Letch had taken it upon herself to come to Q once a week or so in an attempt to train the man how to build up his mental defenses. Most of the time, however, their purposeful visits fell into idle chatter, instead.

_“I can see your _katra_, if that’s what you’re asking_,” Q replied, shrugging dismissively. 

In the meld, Q’s eyes worked as they had originally with no assistance or strange feedback, so he was able to see clearly as T’Letch’s cheeks flooded a distinct shade of embarrassed green. Q delighted in causing the Vulcan woman to inadvertently reveal emotion, even something so minor as that.

_“I see,_” T’Letch murmured, and Q knew she would never give him the satisfaction of pressing for details regarding what her _katra_ might look like to his eyes.

A silence fell--companionably, for lack of a better word--between them. 

T’Letch’s projected self turned her head slightly, as if listening to something that Q himself could not hear.

_“The Captain has come to the infirmary. He wishes to join the meld.”_

Q felt his heart squeeze in his facsimile of a chest. With his own recovery and Picard’s duties and everything else between them, they had not had a chance to speak directly in the meld since the first time. Not trusting himself to speak, Q nodded his agreement. A moment later, Jean-Luc wavered into view in the lush garden illusion.

Q immediately approached, arms wide, ready to embrace the man. Jean-Luc, however, interrupted the action, holding out his hands to ward Q back, as if he were an advancing Andorian slug instead of a loving spouse.

_“What’s--?” _

_“This isn’t a social visit, Q,”_ Picard said, and Q flinched bodily back from the severe, professional tone.

Slowly, Q forced himself to relax. He crossed his arms over his chest in defense and rallied a parody of a smirk. _“I see. You need something.”_

Picard’s face gave nothing away. Q felt more on trial there, in the simulated gardens of Starfleet Academy, than he had in M’s dire courtroom. _“We’ve had another encounter with the entity known as M.”_

Q paled and stumbled back. A bench--one he had not himself thought to conjure--appeared immediately to catch his fall. T’Letch, having seen to the safety of Q’s behind, quietly stepped back from the ensuing conversation to give the two men at least an illusion of privacy.

_“We were in route to answer a medical distress signal from a nearby mining colony. The M creature says her people are impressed with us. She’s threatening to instigate some sort of test.” _ Q remembered this encounter well. He, too, had diverted the crew soon after the trial. He had been impressed with Riker, at first--strange, in hindsight, to consider that he’d ever thought Riker more intriguing than Picard. But it was Riker’s obstinance in that event that had caused Q to reconsider. Jean-Luc had proven himself, that day, as quite fascinating in his own right. Their banter in the Captain’s ready room over the words of Shakespeare had been the first inclination, to Q’s mind, that Picard had something in him worth deeper exploration. 

_“Q? Are you listening to me? This is serious! You’re the only person on board who seems to have any understanding whatsoever of this being. I need answers. I demand them.”_

“‘_What a piece of work is man,’” _Q muttered to himself, lost for a moment to a past that did not, technically, exist.

“Q!” 

Q startled as Picard ambushed him, throwing himself down next to Q on the stone bench and giving his shoulders a hard, brutal shake. _“You are part of this. You will help us. I will not allow any more of my crew to fall victim to--.”_

_“She has no interest at all in you or your crew, _mon ami_,”_ Q corrected, dully. He did not even bother to meet Jean-Luc’s eyes. He did not wish to see what might be expressed there. _“I am, as ever, her target. Just let it play out. There’s nothing else you can do.”_

_“I will not--.”_

_“Jean-Luc,”_ Q interrupted. He paused, daring to let his head fall forward, daring to rest his suddenly aching head against the stretch of Picard’s arm. _“Whatever M means by repeating this experience, she does it only to torment _me_.”_

A pause. Then, slowly. _“I accept that theory, based on previous evidence. That said, you can’t promise me that my crew will be safe in her machinations against you. I doubt she’s above using them as pawns in her own game.”_

_“You’re right”_ Q agreed. _“But there’s no sense in fighting it, either. You don’t have the power to resist her. None of us does.”_

_“I know you’re not the first to throw yourself into a confrontation, Q, but I’m also unused to you giving up so easily.”_

Q laughed, the sound muffled by Jean-Luc’s uniform sleeve._ “You call this easy? You do remember why we are reduced to communicating via mindmeld, don’t you?” _

_“I didn’t mean it like that.”_

Q sighed and pulled himself with effort away from the warmth of Jean-Luc’s imagined body. _“Promise me you won’t do anything stupid. Please, Jean-Luc. Truly, there’s nothing you or your crew can do but play along with her games.”_

_“You must know something that could be of use.”_

Q considered this. “_Yes, actually. I do. Beings like the M, they’re experts at the manipulation of time and space. They have an understanding of the components of the multiverse that no mortal species could ever hope to replicate. But for all that they are geniuses in the workings of reality and time...they’ve got no concept at all of how to handle living beings. She’ll underestimate you all, time and again. How you might use that to an advantage, I couldn’t guess--I never could--but it’s an ace up your sleeve, all the same.”_

Jean-Luc’s gaze was assessing. _“Will you ever explain all of this to me, properly?”_

_“Probably not.”_

Jean-Luc sighed and stood, tugging his uniform into place. When he turned to face Q again, he was fully in his Captain persona once more. _“Thank you for your assistance. I’ll pass your report on to my senior staff and see what we can do with it.”_

Q, not trusting himself to speak, gave the other man a nod of acknowledgement. Without even saying goodbye, Picard disengaged himself from the meld and disappeared.

_“T’Letch,”_ Q sighed, feeling abandoned and raw. _“Can we close our session for the day? I’m tired.”_

_“Of course, sir.”_

And if the Vulcan deigned to allow her fingers to trace in comfort over Q’s cheek as she pulled away from his psi-points, neither of them mentioned it.

\--

_The point of the game is to survive._

Q woke with a jerk. His first impression was that the VISOR did not seem to be functioning properly. His second was that the air felt and smelled strange--no longer the inoffensive, purified air of the ship but a warmer breeze carrying the unmistakable scent of a barely familiar planetoid.

_So much for originality, _Q thought to himself. M had carbon-copied the scene of his little army game, it seemed. The reason the VISOR could not easily read his surroundings was because of the green cast of the sky. Q mentally accounted for the tint in how he read the device’s feedback and suddenly his vision cleared, showing outlines of endless fields of rock. The tent and French-inspired garb he himself had conjured the first time around were nowhere to be seen. Instead, a figure appeared from thin air.

“You look awful,” M said as a greeting. She sounded pleased.

Q could feel a solid structure behind his back, holding him partially upright. Probably one of the more cylindrical rock formations. His hands lay awkwardly, one half curled in the dirt, the left flopped over his waist. He lifted his left hand and scrunched his fingers in a rude gesture in M’s general direction.

“You’re progressing,” M noted, with interest. “That Crusher woman is a more capable doctor than I had initially expected.”

_And I’m stronger than you expected, too_, Q countered in his mind.

“Mm, I’m sure you’d like to think that,” M agreed. She walked toward him on heavy boots that seemed to shake the very ground. Q held himself perfectly still, refusing to cower, though his mechanical heart whirred into high gear with panic.

“Do you remember that decade we spent together in the flare of a burgeoning nova just after we were joined?”

Q blinked behind the VISOR, surprised by the apparent non sequitur. _Yes, vaguely. Why?_

“‘Why’,” M sighed. Q let out a soft noise of protest as her hands cradled his jawbones. She seemed to be staring through the VISOR and into his eyes. “Because it was beautiful, Q. Because we had fun there. Because in those long hours surrounded by bright and glorious light, I thought you loved me.”

Q could not say ‘I did love you.’ Not because he never did but because, in the moment, his feelings so long ago no longer mattered. _What are you going to do to me, this time? _He asked instead.

Her fingertips dug hard into his flesh, digging in between the spaces of his teeth. He flinched at the minor pain, for all that he knew something worse was doubtlessly to follow. 

“You truly don’t regret. Not even the good days, the easy days. You don’t miss it or me at all.”

_My memory isn’t long enough, anymore, _Q pointed out in what he hoped was a reasonable manner. _It was more than a lifetime ago. I can’t be expected to feel much of anything over something that barely seems like a dream. _

“Mortal minds,” M scoffed. “That’s your excuse?”

_I don’t think there is an excuse, _Q admitted. _I can’t excuse it. If I could, I would have tried during the trial. Why are we doing this still, M? What’s the point? Whatever you want from me, I can’t give it. _

“You think you’ve suffered enough. You believe I go beyond the lengths of justifiable punishment, now.”

Q didn’t think that, actually. His crime was quite literally infinite. He had destroyed too much to ever possibly calculate. There could be no hope of reparations when the damage inflicted was so massively severe. But that was the point, wasn’t it? M could take and take from him for the rest of eternity; no matter what, it would never be enough to bring her peace. 

_You keep acting like this is justice. It isn’t justice. There can be no justice, here. All that’s left is revenge._

“The Q--I mean, the M--do not deal in something so petty and mortal a concept as _revenge_.”

_Interesting. So what kind of creature does that make you? _

Q could sense the M’s intentions in the precious seconds before her action. It filled him with dread and fear but his limited mortal body could not hope to move quickly enough to avoid it. Her sharp nails broke the skin of his cheeks, tearing down in one brutal swipe. Six lacerations opened wide in his flesh, pouring warm blood that flowed in rivets right off his chin and down his front. The pain was razor sharp, almost making Q wish that he’d never regained full feeling in his face. 

“Fine, then,” M hissed, showing the most emotion she had since their first encounter. Slowly, over time, she lost more and more of her control. She spoke in a hiss. “I admit it, if it pleases you. This _is _revenge, pure and simple. Your earned punishment has already been enacted, according to Continuum law. I don’t care. It’s not enough. It never will be. If I’m to be considered a rogue entity, then so be it. Let the M try and stop me; I don’t care about their so-called greater missions. I’m not done with you, Q. I never will be. The Humans can do what they will in this universe. They can ascend or fall, either way. I don’t care. You’re my prize to do with as I please.”

Q raised his hands with some difficulty and pressed his palms over his brutalized face. In the VISOR, M’s outline flickered and flared like a growing, hungry fire. Her aura was one of pure and unadulterated rage, uncontrolled and insensible. Q pressed his left heel into the dirt and dragged his right side along with him, trying uselessly to scramble out of M’s limitless range.

M flared out of his sight and appeared behind him, taking the place of the rocks that had been supporting his back. Her arms looped through his arms, capturing his ribs in a tight embrace. “You’re right. The M will not appreciate my actions,” M breathed out in a rush. Her words were rapid and messy, syllables crashing into each other with force, “They will try to take you from me, in time. I can’t let them. I’ll have to hide you. I have to--.”

Q snapped his head back and bashed his skull against her face. It did no damage, of course (she was an _M_, he had no chance against her in any possible way), but the abrupt interruption served to leave her silent and distracted for a time. 

Flares of light appeared in Q’s line of sight, at least four of them. Af first, he thought they were the byproduct of the head trauma, but the glow failed to dissipate over time. They did not deign to take on physical presence, but the VISOR was able to read lifeforms outside of the typical visual spectrum. A terrible, screeching noise filled the air. Q instinctively slid his bloodied hands from his face to his ears to try and block out the piercing sound. A part of him vaguely recognized the insensible cacophony as a language he himself had once known and spoken between himself and other Q. 

“No,” M said, replying using her human throat and Standard language, “You can’t take this opportunity from me. You promised me justice.”

The warped, awful noises transitioned seamlessly into a language that matched M’s own. “We did. But as you yourself have stated, what you do now and plan to do in the future goes well beyond appropriate retribution. We have allowed your rage, M, so far. We felt it only right, considering all that you lost. But now, the M Continuum realizes our mistake. You have, like the Q you so despise, been infected by mortal sensibilities. Your rage is not seemly or justified. You take this too far.”

“You...accuse me of--?”

“Even your offense at such accusation indicates to us that you have been corrupted by the influence of lower lifeforms. No M would allow themselves to be so easily degraded.”

_They have a point, _Q chimed in, brightly.

M whirled on him, stolen Human face twisted into a terrible snarl. “You--.”

“We believe you require a period of isolation and readjustment,” the light entities interrupted, almost boredly. “A few eons should do it.”

M’s snarl dropped into an expression of shock and fear. “What?” she shouted, approaching her fellow M in long strides. “You can’t be serio--!”

M disappeared in a flash of light.

“We apologize for any inconvenience,” the entities said, though they didn’t sound very sorry. “It is the opinion of the M that your sentence has been passed and suitably enacted. No further action will be taken against you. Goodbye.”

Q opened his mouth, forgetting that he could not speak through such, but it didn’t matter; the planetoid and its inhabitants disappeared around him before he could so much as take in a breath.

The VISOR filled with familiar data, reading the details of the _Enterprise _infirmary. The air felt cool and smelled sterile once more. Q relaxed back into the slight slant of his bed, so relieved to be home again that he could think of little else.

His relief cut short with the sound of a startled cry. “Q!” Crusher all but shouted, her footsteps loud as she ran toward his bed. “What’s happened to you?”

The blood on Q’s face felt stiff and sticky, already collagulating and drying against his skin. Dirt from the planet clung, gritty, to his functioning side, and formed an uncomfortable pressure under his fingernails. His body, acclimated to the warmer climate of the desert planetoid, started to shiver in the cooler atmosphere of the ship. Everything felt overwhelmingly tangible, proving that his experience had not been a simple dream.

M was gone. Her torment--planned for an eternity and more, no doubt--now at an unexpected end due to a literal _deus ex machina_. Q had never expected to be grateful for the strange logic of the Continuum (justice, yes; revenge, no), but now he felt a rush of gratitude nearly like a prayer. _Thank you, thank you. _

\--

The lacerations resisted the effects of Crusher’s instruments. In the end, she resorted to old-fashioned methods, stitching Q’s skin together with a needle and thread as if he were a battered sock. Q gripped the edge of his bed the whole time, focusing in on the images captured by the VISOR to distract himself from the pain. Once stitched, Crusher covered the wounds in medical gauze. Her fingers pressed gently at the corners of the patches to ensure they stuck. 

“There. That should do it. We’ll check on them from time to time to make sure there’s no infection. Beyond that, though, you should know...without the dermal regenerator, you’re going to scar.”

Q lifted his good shoulder a few inches in a shrug. Just more on a long list of physical dysfunctions he had acquired over the last few months. What did it matter?

“In the ‘pros’ column, though, you’re making impressive strides in feeling and range of movement on your left side. I don’t want to promise too much, but if your rate of regain continues at this pace, I think you’ll have full use back in a few more weeks.”

Q wondered, dully, how he should feel about such news. Glad that at least one side of his body would be functional? Upset that his right side below the neck lagged behind, unable to feel or move voluntarily? A mix of the two? At the moment, he felt largely hollowed out, empty. He’d felt many strange and turbulent emotions in his time as a Human, but he’d never felt nothing, before.

“Q? Are you with me?”

“Altered grains,” Q replied, dismissively. He knew the malapropisms were especially egregious in that moment, but he didn’t have the strength to sort them out. 

“All right. Well, let me help you get settled again. I’ll call the Captain and T’Letch and arrange for a, uhm...a debrief, I suppose.”

There was little doubt in the mind of the good doctor who had tried to skin Q’s jaws to ribbons, it seemed. Good. Beverly really was more clever than Q had never previously given her credit for. Q looked forward to declaring M’s incursion at an end. He felt significantly less anticipation to speak to Jean-Luc again so soon after their last brittle meeting. Still, needs must.

T’Letch’s fingers were dry and familiar against Q’s psi-points. She deftly twisted her fingers to avoid so much as brushing against his aching cheeks. “My mind to your mind, my thoughts to your thoughts.”

They did not appear in the garden, this time. Instead, Q had recalled to the last detail the innards of the _Enteprise’s _senior staff room. It was official and drab, probably exactly what Picard wanted.

Picard visibly hesitated upon recognizing the room change. He adapted with his usual panance, however, and settled himself into his place at the head of the table. Q sat on his right side a few chairs down the row. T’Letch settled at the opposite end of the table, rigid as a board and as expressive.

_“Dr. Crusher says she believes your wounds may scar.” _

Q blinked his imaginary eyes, startled. He hadn’t expected the Captain to hone in on that detail, let alone to open with it. He’d rather expected a more typical demand of ‘tell me what you know, Q!’--a phrase that was starting to take the place of the older standard of ‘get off my ship!’ in their Captain-to-Q repertoire. Unconsciously, Q ran his hand over the lower half of his face. It was smooth and untouched, of course; Q continued to present in the melds as he remembered himself from before his first M encounter.

_“Oh. Yes. One last dagger for M to stick me with, I would guess. The dermal regenerator can’t touch it.”_

Something indefinable sparked in Jean-Luc’s expression and quickly disappeared under a mask of calm._ “I see.”_

_“That’s my report, by the way. M brought me to a planetoid--to further her punishments, I assume. She tried to claw my tongue out through my cheekbones. Her people came and took her away. She violated their terms of agreement, you see. They found the breadth of her tortures...petty.”_

Jean-Luc’s hands, resting on the conference table, tightened into fists and then released. _“So she won’t be coming back?”_

_“No. Not until long after you and I are dead, I imagine.”_

_“Forgive me for saying so, all things considered, but it all seems rather--.”_

_“--anticlimactic. I know. I actually thought about that in the moment. Saved by an actual ‘god from the machine.’ But it’s true. She’s in timeout. This trial she concocted is over. You should know, though, I don’t entirely expect that to be the end of it. She mentioned that her people find Humanity interesting. They might be back.”_

Jean-Luc’s jaw twitched._ “And will they be as hostile?”_

Q opened his mouth, ready to deny it, but then he paused and considered the truth of what he was being asked. At the time, Q had never considered his actions toward Picard and his crew to be especially cruel. Not kind, certainly, but not ‘hostile.’ His perspective now, as a Human himself, having suffered at the machinations of M, made him pause. Finally, he sighed._ “Perhaps. I don’t know.”_

_“Very well.”_ Picard stood.

Q wished he felt surprised by the man’s desire to close contact now that business was done. It had been happening so much, of late, it was almost impossible to take it personally. Almost.

So Q _was_ surprised, then, when their surroundings did not shimmer out into nothingness but, instead, twisted and altered shape and settled into something different and new. 

_“Where--?”_

Q interrupted himself, turning around on the spot. Of course. It was Picard’s--it was their--quarters on the _Enterprise_. Q himself had only spent a few nights there before the M encounter. All his days and nights since had passed in the infirmary. Q had almost forgotten what the suite looked like entirely.

_“T’Letch has agreed to remain in the living area,”_ Jean-Luc said, sitting down on the bed. _“She can still sense and hear us, of course, but I thought at least some appearance of privacy might be appreciated.”_

Q hesitated and then, slowly, sat down on the bed right next to his spouse. He stared blankly down at his lap as Jean-Luc took his hand (_my bad hand, _Q thought, though such distinctions didn’t matter in the meld) and gave his fingers a gentle squeeze. 

_“Jean-Luc--.” _

_“--Q, listen--.”_

_“--You first, Captain--.”_

_“--Oh, I’m sorry, please--.”_

They both fell silent. 

_“I don’t actually know what to say,”_ Jean-Luc admitted, voice soft.

_“For once, I don’t, either.”_

_“Then let’s not say anything, for a while._” Jean-Luc rested back against the headboard. Q followed. Jean-Luc gave Q’s hand and arm a slight tug, forcing him to rest his body weight against him. Q heaved a heavy sigh and rested his head on his husband’s shoulder. 

They lay like that for a long time in the meld, close and silent and lost to their own unshared musings.

The moment the meld ended, Jean-Luc tugged at his uniform and went back to his duties. T’Letch stayed behind and sat at Q’s bedside for another hour or so, speaking to him--with no provocation--of her most current ‘Fleet project. Her measured, emotionless tone lulled Q into a state of hazy relaxation that, at some moment he could not later determine, led him into a deep and dreamless sleep.

\--


	6. Chapter 6

Without the looming spectre of M over their lives, a new routine began to establish itself in the _Enterprise_ infirmary. In the morning, Crusher walked him through a series of standardized tests and recorded the results on her PADD. Afterward, they worked together on Q’s newest parlor trick--feeding himself instead of relying on technological assistance. Regulated to bland, formless foods, Q still couldn’t help but delight in the small concession to his autonomy. It hardly mattered that it took him a few days to keep from accidentally misjudging the distance from the tray to his mouth; the VISOR read the food oddly, with a distracting light trail pattern that affected his depth perception for a while before he could adjust.

After his meeting with Crusher, Q surrendered himself to one of the medical staff and long interminable eons of physical therapy. After the first few days of that--and all the complaining that followed it--Deanna Troi began to appear regularly a few minutes before each session. At first she arrived with handy excuses--little errands and questions and things that would excuse her presence in that space at that time. After a week or so, however, she dropped the pretense. While Q was verbally bullied and viciously manhandled into awful, painful pretzel shapes, Deanna told Q stories of her family and her experiences previous to her assignment to the ship. Her soothing and friendly manner grated, at times, but it was better than being lost to nothing but repetitive muscle motions for hours on end.

At the lunch hour, Geordi came to visit, often with Data in tow. Geordi and Q would eat lunch together--Geordi’s packed lunch always smelling much more pleasant than the slop on Q’s own tray--and Data sat aside, observing the process with his usual high interest. At first, Q capitalized on the opportunity and grilled Geordi--via charades and trial and error communication--ceaselessly on the functioning of his VISOR. After a while, however, it occurred to Q that Geordi intended to visit every day, when able, and there was no reason to rush for answers. The tone of their interactions shifted from one-sided interrogations to easy, three-way conversations over the following days. Geordi was there when Q was allowed his first cup of replicated coffee. The ensuing caffeine rush after so many months spent clean made Q feel more twitchy and irritable than energized, however, so it was also his last.

T’Letch arrived in the afternoons and initiated their melds. For the most part, they held their sessions in the copycat gardens, but from time to time Q would feel a spark of his old self and use the flexibility of the mindscape to his advantage, creating wondrous sights imagined and remembered. T’Letch bore it all with her same unflappable expression, but Q knew that she appreciated each and every sight he shared with her, all the same. Together, they worked on Q’s mental defenses. With time, he regained something almost as sturdy and ingrained as he’d had possessed intrinsically as a member of the Continuum. He hoped the ability would not be required much in the future, but as a member of the _Enterprise _crew, even a deposed and useless one, the motto ‘better safe than sorry’ reigned.

The only person to whom Q felt a kinship who did _not _visit often was the one person Q wanted to see the most. Despite his previous promises, Jean-Luc Picard remained a distant and inscrutable figure in Q’s new life. When he stopped by, his visits were brief, and he always seemed too busy to bother whenever T’Letch was easily within reach to help them communicate via a meld. He stood by Q’s bedside, instead. He asked route, inane questions (“How are you feeling, Q?”) and sometimes held Q’s left hand. He never stayed longer than half an hour at a time, always ready with one excuse or another. Q knew that every excuse was likely legitimate--Jean-Luc did not lie easily--but it hardly mattered. Q felt abandoned all the same.

\--

“Where been?” Q asked the moment Deanna arrived. He was already halfway through a mid-week physical therapy session; she was never late.

“I’m sorry, Q. We’ve...a lot of things are happening. I was needed.”

Q waved her off. “Fine,” he grumbled, dismissing her. His words likely meant nothing, but Deanna could usually feel his emotions well enough to mostly translate. 

“Q, please, I--.”

“_Fine,_” Q hissed, partially from frustration and partially because the therapy nurse had just twisted his joints in a way his body did not appreciate.

“All right. I’ll go. But I’m coming back tomorrow.”

Q did not want her to come back tomorrow. After all, she was ‘needed,’ wasn’t she? Why waste her time with Q when there were so many other important things on which to spend her time and attention? “Boots,” he repeated, stubbornly.

“_Q_, if you’d let me explain--,” Deanna said, exasperated.

“No! No. You can’t explain! I don’t want...uhm. Excuses. Excuses!” Q shouted. It was one of the longest, most coherent sentences he’d managed since waking up. “You should be here. You should be here. I need you here with me.”

Everything went silent and very still.

The nurse slowly lowered Q’s leg to the ground and then skittered off to find Crusher. Deanna helped Q into a more comfortable position on the padded mat on which he lay, resting his upper body against her chest. “Do that again. Tell me what you feel,” Deanna prodded, her voice a subdued and disbelieving whisper. 

“...In c--no. I...c-can’t. I can’t? I can’t. Tell you.”

“You just did,” Deanna said, obviously beaming, if her tone was anything to judge by. “Oh, Q.”

What followed was both a dream and a nightmare for Q. People swooped in on all sides, demanding and needy and unwilling to let him rest. For the next several hours, Q found himself playing an odd game of call-and-response, answering questions with stammered, jarring sentences in positive and negatives. More often than not, his words came out the same usual, limited, mixed-up gibberish. But--with enough concentration and careful movement of his mouth--he could force the issue one out of every hundred or so and make his thoughts match the full sentences falling from his lips. By dinner time (he missed lunch, in all the commotion), Q slouched bonelessly in his elevated bed, eyes fighting to stay open, mouth refusing to cooperate to even speak his scattered, incorrect vocabulary, let alone proper Standard responses.

Crusher--bless her--finally interceded on his behalf. “All right, all right. I think that’s enough for today. Everyone go about their business. Q and I will try this again tomorrow and keep you updated. Go on.”

Geordi squeezed Q’s shoulder in passing. Data mimicked the gesture in a stilted manner, obviously fighting to control his android strength. T’Letch brushed her fingertips intimately over his psi-points and spoke something he did not recognize in her native tongue. Deanna leaned over him bodily and pressed her warm lips to his forehead, fighting a wide smile the whole time. Crusher checked his vitals with sure, quick movements and then forced a bland turkey sandwich in his hands before allowing him to sleep.

Through it all, from start to finish, Q never saw Jean-Luc Picard.

\--

Q was awake but not awake, floating in a state of exhaustion too deep to shatter. Fingers traced through his hair, moving from scalp to nape and repeating the motion over and over. Q focused on the sensation of it, breathing a soft sigh of contentment. Fingers used to glide through his hair like that long ago, too. He could remember it clearly: under a heavy quilt near the hearth in La Barre, tucked up against an old tree in the Academy gardens, sprawled on a couch in his quarters on the _Stargazer_, lying down on the grass on some unremembered planet staring up at unfamiliar stars. 

“Jean-Luc,” Q croaked, throat overused and dry from the day’s events.

“Shh. Go back to sleep.”

Q did not need to be told twice, and, yet….

“Miss...miss you. Miss you so much.”

For a brief moment, the fingers went still. Then they started up again with slightly more pressure than before. “I know. Just sleep, Q.”

And that time he did.

\--

Q woke a few times throughout the next day, always barely submerging from sleep and quickly falling back again. He caught snippets of reality here and there, pieces of his life that bled in and out of dreams like watercolors. Geordi gently disengaged the VISOR from his eyes, scolding him about the need to take it off in sleep. Data’s voice filtered through his consciousness, speaking in perfect accents, sounding out words from one of Doyle’s works. Deanna’s hand rested, palm flat, over his forehead as if checking him for fever (Yvette Picard had rested her hand on his head like that, before, when he was just an odd, abandoned child who spent far too much time in her home; Q dreamed of her for a while, after that, remembering the way she’d sing French folk songs while baking bread and chopping vegetables for stew). T’Letch’s consciousness brushed against his, tidying the dark and shadowy places in his dreams in lieu of being able to so much as sense the barest essence of his memories. Crusher appeared through it all, touching and talking and making notations in his medical record for a later date.

He loved them all, and the realization was both painful and a relief. 

He had been thrown aside, perhaps, but he had not been left defenseless and alone. Jean-Luc must still love him, if he’d left Q behind with such good friends.

\--


	7. Chapter 7

“How’s your headache?”

Q gleefully smeared another thick layer of butter on his toast and crammed the whole slice into his mouth, chewing with vigor. After sleeping all of the previous day away, he’d woken with a ravenous appetite. “Ok,” he said, muffled by breakfast and nothing else.

“Mmhm. Any other pains?”

Q swallowed thickly and went for the pale, unflavored oatmeal. Crusher put a hand on his wrist, stalling him with an amused twinkle in her eye.

“You eat like Wesley,” she commented, warmly. “Pause for a minute, all right? Just until I can get through this checklist.”

Q glanced longingly at the steaming hot cereal but obliged, pushing it aside. “No paint. Pan. Pain. There is no pain.”

“Great. Okay, good. Listen, we’re going to start up your PT again today, but I want you to keep the talking to a minimum. I know it’s exciting, but the last thing I want is for you to keep overtaxing yourself. You’re still healing. If you push too hard, you’re going to slow down that process, if not relapse completely. Understand?”

Q nodded. He had no desire to slow down the process and feared relapsing into any of his previous states of healing with all his heart. He could be a good little patient. _Mostly_, Q thought smirking to himself. He certainly intended to start a hard bargain for real food, sooner rather than later. If he had to eat any more white foods, he’d scream.

“Bev.”

Crusher continued notations in her PADD. “Hm?”

“Food. Lunch.”

Crusher pulled herself from her internal musings and gave him her full attention. “I don’t want to--.”

“Please?”

She sighed. “We’ll start to introduce some more substantial items. But you’ve only been off the feeding implement for a short time. Your body needs to adjust. If we overreach, you’re going to get sick. And I know how much you hate to vomit.”

_Does anyone _like_ to vomit_? Q wondered, skeptically. Sure, he did put up slightly more of a fuss than most, but it was so _revolting_. Q pressed his palms together in a pleading gesture and made his eyes wide.

“You do _everything_ like Wesley,” Crusher muttered in complaint. She sighed and fussily brushed a curl or two out of Q’s eyes. “Fine. Fine, fine. But don’t you come crying to me if you start feeling sick, buster.”

Q knew without a doubt that it wouldn’t matter if he ‘came crying’ or not. Beverly Crusher would not stand by and let him suffer for his own hubris. Not now, anyway. Not anymore. They’d been through too much together.

“Turkey sandwich for lunch. But you can have some broccoli on the side and maybe some mustard on the bread. All right?”

Q gave her a thumbs up and a grin. “Favorite,” he told her. “Favorite pe-person. Best doctor.”

Crusher did not seem as flattered by that as he had hoped. Her brow wrinkled a bit, as if reminded of something unpleasant. “Q,” she replied, slowly, as if thinking over her words carefully. “I’d like to talk to you about something, but I realize it’s personal...so you are welcome to tell me ‘no.’” Crusher smiled and Q smiled back. ‘No’ was one of his easiest words, these days. He had a rather sentimental attachment to the two-letter utterance, now. 

“It’s about Jean-Luc.”

The smile dropped from Q’s face. “No,” he said, immediately.

Crusher held up a hand in a gesture of peace. “Okay. Okay, I understand. I’ll leave you to--.”

“Wait. Yes. Tell me.”

Crusher sighed and put her PADD aside. She sat primly in the visitor’s chair next to Q’s bed. “I’m talking out of turn. I want to make that clear; I’m not supposed to talk to you about this. I promised.”

“Bev,” Q said, reaching out a hand. Crusher took it. Her skin was cooler than Q’s and softer by far than the ragged, scar-crossed, rope-burned flesh of his own fingers and palms.

“It’s okay. I think this is too important to keep under a bushel.”

Q could feel his trepidation rising. Everything about this encounter seemed suddenly ominous. Perhaps he’d rather be ignorant, after all.

Crusher cleared her throat. “Your replacement--the new Chief Science Officer, I mean--arrived a few days ago. The ‘Fleet have designated his placement as a permanent one. They...they don’t expect you to recover enough to meet the standards required by--.”

“Bev.”

“Right. I’m sorry. I just think you should know that Jean-Luc went to bat for your cause. He’s been arguing with admirals and I don’t even know who else with every spare minute he has, on top of all his duties as Captain. Every hour, I would send him new reports on your progress that he could maybe use to bolster his position. He tried, Q. Really and truly. He argued for time, at first, and when they wouldn’t give him that he started a new debate about the inherent ableism of the ‘Fleet. He worked up an entire network of accessibility advocates and amassed mountains of research on new, cutting edge assistive devices. He argued every avenue he could--for a while there he was even selling T’Letch as a full-time translator of sorts. He went down every possible avenue and left no stone unturned and no higher-ups unabashed, Q.”

Q pulled his gaze from Beverly. Her output in the VISOR was too confusing, in that moment, to parse out. It hurt his head. That was as good an excuse as any for not being able to meet her eyes.

“I wanted you to know this because I wanted you to know that he didn’t--he fought for you, is what I’m trying to say. And I wanted you to know, too, because I know he’s been...distant, since this all began. I know it hurts you. But I don’t want you to believe it’s because he doesn’t love you. That couldn’t be further from the truth.”

“Perish speech,” Q breathed. He flinched when the thoughts in his mind didn’t line up with what his ears heard, but Crusher seemed to understand, anyway. She squeezed his hand. 

How had he and Jean-Luc ever come to this? Sure, in the original timeline, their relationship had been prickly and difficult. The Captain Picard of the original universe did not hate Q as much as he professed, but he didn’t understand or value the entity, either. Q had always loved that Picard, of course, but that hadn’t mattered to the original captain, who put his duty above all else. Then that man had died, and Q had restarted their life from an earlier point with different variables. 

Now, Jean-Luc loved Q. Even as children, they had loved each other. It took Jean-Luc a long time to recognize the shape and variety of that affection, perhaps, but it had always existed. They had grown together in La Barre. They had learned together at the Academy. They had suffered and thrived together on the _Stargazer_. And now, now...Q was not sure what it was they were doing, but they were _not_ doing it together. 

Q felt so damn lonely. He had--as a former member of a hivemind Continuum and, more currently, the lifelong shadow of an aspiring starship Captain--never been anything but part of something bigger, before. 

Crusher had taken to fussing with his hair again, while he stared into the middle distance, lost to his thoughts.

“Bev,” he said. Her hand stilled and fell away from his head. She looked at him, expectant. “Lunch. M-mouse. Matter. _Mustard_.” 

Crusher’s answering smile was resigned. “Of course. I won’t forget.”

She didn’t forget. And Geordi snuck him a chocolate-chip cookie from his own lunch to go along with it.

\--

Data did not budge an inch as Q’s knees buckled, nearly sending him crashing to the floor. The android simply adjusted his hold and took on the entirety of Q’s bodyweight, waiting patiently for Q to get his uncooperating feet under him once more. By the time he managed that, Q was shaking with the effort. 

“Longest. Bathroom t-trip. Ever,” Q complained. A pain shot, hot and stabbing, up his good side. Q yelped, crumpling over the ensuing muscle spasm like a puppet with all strings cut. Data moved without prompting, tugging Q up into a bridal-style cradle in his arms. Q was beyond being mortified by the picture they must make. The triumph of walking on his own power (more or less) to the infirmary restrooms and almost back again was too sweet a victory to be marred. Another sharp pain assaulted him, throwing the previous thought into stark question.

“_Fuck_,” Q ground out, burying his face in Data’s neck out of sheer instinct for comfort. He’d been especially glad when all of his remembered Standard curse words had comeback.

“Perhaps we should go back, now,” Data surmised.

Q did not have it in him to be sarcastic, in the moment. “Yes. Go.”

They found Crusher pacing restlessly by Q’s empty bedside when they finally returned. She’d taken pains to stay there and not ‘butt in,’ as Q had put it. That’d been the deal they’d made. Q would practice walking, but Crusher was not allowed anywhere near him when he did. Data had become his de facto helpmate in the endeavor almost immediately--none of the medical staff were strong enough to keep from toppling over under Q’s gangling bodyweight whenever he lost his balance. Data, conversely, could have probably lifted Q up with his pinky finger alone, if the situation had called for it. Eventually, they hoped to graduate Q to a non-animate assistance device. In the meantime, Data more than served.

The android laid Q on his bed and stepped politely back while Q wiggled and inched his way about in it, getting comfortable. 

A few weeks previous, minor feeling had returned unexpectedly to Q’s right side. Now, instead of complete numbness, he had the sensation of prickly static. It was odd and painful but still preferable to total lack of sensation. Or, at least, that’s what Crusher kept telling him. Regardless, the improvement meant that Q got to experiment with standing and moving upright, again. It was tedious and frustrating and, possibly, the best thing to happen to Q since M’s initial attack over half a year before.

Seven months, two weeks, and six days, specifically. But who was counting?

It had also been over a month since Q had so much as seen his own spouse. But, again. Counting, who? Not him.

“He’s very busy,” Deanna said, every day.

“The Captain is occupied in sensitive matters,” Data assured.

“I bet you’ll see him soon,” Geordi promised.

“I am unaware of the Captain’s current whereabouts, but I am certain he is justifiably occupied,” T’Letch stated.

Beverly did not make excuses for Jean-Luc. Instead, she gave him extra desserts with his dinners and played board games with him in the evenings and even, after a while, started to bring Wesley with her to work to help fill the time with his endless prattle and constant need for advice. Beverly filled his days from start to finish, perhaps in the hopes that the more occupied his mind, the more distracted his heart.

“I have brought you something of interest,” Data announced, after Q was tucked up properly in bed and idly picking his way through his lunch. Geordi would not join them, today--he was busy with a project or another in the engineering labs.

“Show me?”

Data nodded and retrieved a small carrying case from its place next to Q’s rolling nightstand. The android fiddled with the clasp for a moment and then handed the opened box over to Q. Q took the small box in his left hand, supporting it with the relatively dead weight of his right. In the VISOR, Q could see nothing inside the outlined figure of the box but blackness. “Can’t.” A long pause as Q worked his mouth around the shape of the word. “Sense. See. Can’t see it.”

“Yes. That is because the device is currently dormant. May I?”

Q shrugged and held still while Data leaned in and pressed his fingers against the blackness in the box. Immediately, a soft whirring sound built up from the box. The blackness transitioned into a steady, pink glow. The outline revealed a spherical shape. As Q watched, curious, the small sphere lifted itself up and away from the box and flew with lazy grace in a series of circles around Q’s hand. “What?”

“It is a toy,” Data replied. “I hope that is acceptable. Geordi indicated that it is not uncommon for adult beings to enjoy items of diversion as much as children do. It is a levitating device that has been re-wired to respond to input from the VISOR receptors instead of the more typical remote control.”

Q stared at the floating, flying sphere. If the device was integrated into the frequency of the VISOR’s receptors, that meant that the sphere--like the VISOR--was receiving and sending input directly to his brain via the nodes in his temples. And that meant that he could control the small toy with his mind. Q imagined the looping device--in standby mode, apparently--looping around the peaks of his resting feet. Immediately, the pink glow buzzed away from its idle loop around his hand and dived down the bed toward his feet. It made a perfect figure-eight around his toes, as Q had told it to. 

Q grinned, delighted. From the perspective of an all-powerful, all-knowing entity, such a toy would have been nothing but utterly tiresome, the mindless toy of an equally mindless and primitive race. Having grown up a Human child in the technophobic wilds of rural La Barre, however, the flying device was nothing but a source of endless fascination and child-like joy. 

“Thank you,” Q said, not even having to focus on the words, in that moment, to get them out. He sent the little ball buzzing around the entirety of his room, skirting back to Q and making a tight sequence of swoops and turns in the spaces between Q’s splayed fingers of his left hand. 

“The toy was an acceptable gift, then. I will tell Geordi so.”

“Thank you,” Q repeated, focusing his attention on the android more fully, that time. “Very kind, Data.”

Data’s head tilted just so. “I am not certain that I--as a being without the capacity for emotions--can truly be considered to be kind. However, I appreciate that you are pleased.”

Q rolled his eyes, though of course the effect was likely lost under the weight of the VISOR. “Kind,” he pressed. He would convince the android of the legitimacy of his own inhuman-but-genuine feelings, someday. He had, in that moment, decided to make it a personal mission of sorts.

It wasn’t like he had anything more pressing to do.

\--

“_You are distracted.”_

Q pulled his attention away from the simulated ocean that sprawled out before them. The sand under his bare toes was warm and blindingly white. The water across the way was like glass, so clear and--at the moment--smooth that they could easily see all of the small, shoreline creatures swimming and skittering under it.

“_I’m thinking.”_

_“About what?”_

_“My marriage. I think it might be over, effectively. I’m trying to remember if there is a precedent for Human marriages ending due to total apathy.”_

T’Letch turned her head to peer at him. If she were not a Vulcan, Q might suspect that she was feeling frustrated with him. Certainly, she had a brow raised while the rest of her face remained stoic as stone. “_You are speaking in jest.”_

_“Mostly. About the predcent part. Not so much about the ‘my marriage is falling apart’ part.”_

_“I am sorry. When we first engaged in a meld, in our brief moment of connection, I was made aware of your feelings for the Captain. I know that you love and respect him very much.”_

Q did not quite appreciate the reminder of their first meld together. Those had been difficult days, to say the least. The beginning of the end, though, for the current topic of conversation. 

“_I’ve been wanting to talk to you about that.”_

_“‘That’?”_

_“About my walls.” _T’Letch reached out a hand, as if intending to put her fingers to his psi-points, but she refrained. Instead, her fingers hovered between them as she spoke. “_They feel strong. Are your defenses not adequate?”_

_“They’re perfect, exactly what I needed. Thanks for that. But that’s what I mean. My defenses are strong. I know you’d never want to invade them, and I know that--in their current state--you never could. But I want to bring them down, for you. I want you to see it all.”_

T’Letch’s hand dropped and rested precisely in her lap. “_Something is wrong. You would not make this request in optimal circumstances. Are you ill?”_

_“No! No. I’m fine. Healing all the time, in fact. But that’s what I mean. I’m getting better every day, bit by bit. Bev is starting to cluck about pushing Jean-Luc to contact the ‘Fleet again. She thinks, in another six months or so, I might be able to serve. Not as CSO. I can’t...I can’t, anymore. But I could be _someone_ again, soon.”_

_“You have never ceased to be ‘someone,’” _T’Letch argued, eyebrow rising again.

“_You know what I meant.”_

_“Perhaps. I do not understand how this revelation of your increasing health relates to your wish to deepen the meld.”_

Q sighed gustily. Vulcans made everything so needlessly difficult. The more they bottled up those pesky emotions, the more tedious conversation was required to make up the difference. The effect of replacing logic for feelings, it seemed, was a lot of words, words, words.

“_I have secrets. It used to be that I couldn’t share them because they were dangerous. Maybe they still are, in fact, but I don’t care, anymore. I’ve never liked to pussyfoot around, and the more time I’ve spent locked up inside of myself, the more I feel like it’s time to, to, to, I don’t know. Shake things up! Start a metaphorical mamba! Let someone see and know me, really, truly. Finally.”_

T’Letch’s lips twitched into what Q was almost certain was the very beginnings of a frown. “_Why would you choose to share your secrets with me and not another?”_

_“Because I can’t communicate well enough out in the real world, yet. And because you’re a very good friend to me. But mostly, my dear translator, because you’re not the person to whom I want to spill the beans. You’re just going to be there, anyway, so I might as well.”_

T’Letch tilted her head in a nod of understanding. “_I see. You wish to speak to the Captain.”_

_“Yes.”_

_“I will arrange this for you. Shall I explain your intentions to the Captain?”_

_“You probably better. Otherwise, I’m not so sure he’d agree to see me at all.”_

T’Letch reached out again and this time she did not hesitate. She pressed her fingertips against his own in a Vulcan kiss that Q remembered from his time as an all-knowing being as one reserved for very close family, like a twin sibling--someone with whom one has shared something special and intimate in the extreme. Q blinked at their fingers and then met T’Letch’s eyes. _“I don’t--,”_ he began.

_“--I am soon to see into every corner of your mind, _sa-kai_. I know what that means to you. I do not take it lightly, even if I am only a bystander to the event.”_

Q twisted his fingers, adjusting the touch so that he called her sister as she had called him brother. “_You could never be ‘only’ anything, T’Letch. You’ve done so much for me. I thank you.”_

T’Letch did not smile, but her eyes indicated the intention, all the same.

\--

Q spent much of the next morning playing with the pink sphere toy. He directed the device into every nook and crevice of his room over and over again. The exercise did not serve as much as a distraction as he might have wished, but it was certainly better than lying alone in his bed and staring into space, waiting for the hammer to fall.

The Captain had agreed to his request for a meld meeting. After lunch, T’Letch would arrive with the man in tow. 

Q had not seen Jean-Luc in well over a month. It struck him as funny, almost, as if he was soon to revealing his deepest and most difficult secrets to a total stranger. Jean-Luc did feel rather like that, anymore.

It, perhaps, wasn’t playing fair to try and win the man back with his complete and total honesty. It perhaps wasn’t kind to play to the man’s inherent curiosity, to promise him all the answers to all the questions Q had repeatedly dismissed over their years together. But Q had always played dirty. It was his favorite way to play.

And if Picard were to see the truth of him and still reject him? Well. That was not entirely unexpected. And Q, for his part, was unsure of what he might do in response. Perhaps he would leave the _Enterprise_. Perhaps he would leave mortal existence entirely. Surely there was no point in living without Picard. He’d always known that to be true--it was why he had split the timeline apart in the first place. He could not go on without Jean-Luc at his side.

And, yet, for months, now, Q had done just that--thanks to various crewmen of the ship. Thanks to his friends. There was, as it turned out, more to Human life than dogging at Jean-Luc’s heels.

But he would like to dog them, again, all the same.

“You look kind of manic,” Geordi said, startling Q so badly that the little sphere went careening off across the room, slamming hard into a wall. “Oo, ouch. Sorry.”

Geordi walked across the room and retrieved the sphere. “It knocked out some wiring, but I can fix it over lunch. What do you get, today?”

“Lasagna. Salad.”

“Yummy. I brought sushi.” Geordi sat at his usual place and started laying out his lunch. “Data’s gotta skip today. They have him doing some reprogramming in the lab. New bug in the replicator system. Chocolate milk keeps comin’ out strawberry. And nobody wants that.”

“No,” Q agreed. A nurse brought his tray and he sat in silence a long while, poking listlessly at his food.

“Hey,” Geordi prompted. “First you were manic, now you’re depressed. What’s going on? Is everything okay?”

Q looked over at Geordi, considering if he could open up to the man. Geordi was highly intelligent, witty, and kind in his own bumbling way. He was awkward, but mostly with women, and he tried so, so hard to be Q’s friend. “Jean-Luc. Visiting later.”

Geordi paused over his sushi. “Ah,” he said.

“‘Ah,’” Q repeated, nodding.

“Listen, I don’t want to get into your personal business--.”

“--but w-white, waste, will, _will_.”

Geordi smiled. “Yeah. But I will, anyway. See, the thing is, when you and the Captain first got assigned to this ship, the skuttlebutt was out of control. People all over from every department had something to say about the Captain. There were all of these wild stories about how he got his position on the _Stargazer_ and all the crazy adventures that ship had under his command. Nobody had a clue what he was like as a person, though. Reserved, it seemed like. Not very close to his crews. Kept a professional distance. Which, you know, that’s okay. Nobody minds that. It makes sense, in our line of work, to stay detached. But everybody also said that no matter how aloof he might be, the Captain had to have a heart of gold because he loved you--and you were damn difficult.”

Q grimaced at his mutilated lasagna and waved at the man to continue. 

“Everybody knew what kind of person you were gonna be. Intelligent, arrogant, and downright mean. Didn’t care about anybody much except the Captain, and you’d probably lie right down and die for him, if it came to that. They said that everybody in the admiralty knew you by name, that you spent all your time at the Academy talking their ears off to get the Captain recognized. That story about you and the Nauusicans? Legendary. I heard at least a dozen variations of it in one day alone.”

Q rubbed, absently and unaware of it, at his chest right over his heart.

“When you two arrived, I figured most of the grapevine hubbub was right on the nose. Aloof but capable Captain and pain-in-the-ass CSO husband.”

Q pushed his fork under a tomato on his plate and bounced it to the other side of his plate. He sat in the silence for a while before glancing at Geordi expectantly. “Point?”

Geordi finished chewing the piece of sushi in his mouth and swallowed with a shrug. “You’re not what I was told you’d be. Or, I guess, you aren’t who you were when we met. What happened to you was terrible and cruel and unjust--no, I know you did _something_ to deserve it--but I don’t care. Whatever you did to that M lady, what she did back wasn’t right. But for all that your experiences the last several months are unconscionable, the effect they’ve had on you is notable and, I think, for the better. You’re my friend, Q. I don’t think that would have happened if not for this.”

Q considered this a moment and finally nodded his agreement. Sure. He was different, now. He could accept that. He had learned about the value of change, already. Becoming a Human, growing up as one, had already drastically altered him from the immortal entity he had once been. And he could hardly deny that he had gained as much or more than he had lost, because of M. He knew he had friends. He recognized their value, as people, in a way that he had never managed in La Barre or the Academy or any of his previous postings.

“Point?” Q pressed, having a feeling Geordi wasn’t quite done.

Geordi reached over and snagged a good chunk of Q’s cold lasagna with his chopsticks, chewing thoughtfully on the noodles as he organized his thoughts. “So, what happened with M changed _you_. But I don’t think it changed the Captain.”

Q opened his mouth to argue or press for more or _something, _but he shook his head, falling silent and still as he considered how Geordi had described his spouse. Captain Jean-Luc Picard: Reserved. Professional. Detached. 

“Yes,” Q agreed, quietly, wounded. “Yes. But. Not? Not to m-me.”

“Right. He wouldn’t have been like that toward you. Even without ever seeing it, folks knew that much. Everybody knew that you loved each other, that you were close and had been since you were boys. That you were, were...geez, what did T’Letch call it? It starts with a ‘t’.”

“_T’hy’la,” _Q sighed. Of course she’d say that. What a romantic.

“Yeah, that. So, I figure: You’ve changed; you’re not the same person you were. And maybe the Captain doesn’t know what to do with that, so he’s doing what comes easiest to him with new people, instead.”

Q sat up straight, staring at Geordi with wide eyes. Could that be it? Was Jean-Luc so set in his ways that he simply couldn’t stand change, didn’t know what to do with such a massive shift in his reality? ...Of course it was true. Q knew how uptight the man could be. The Captain Picard of his former universe had been nothing but rigidity, superficially stiff as a board and hard as stone, unwilling to bend for fear of the chaos underneath.

Jean-Luc Picard had been a radical, troublesome child and a reckless young man. But the situation with Nausicaans had changed him, no matter who had ultimately ended up at the end of their blade. Jean-Luc had learned that leading the unordered life of a troublemaker was dangerous. It led to the people one loved most being hurt. And Q had been hurt, indeed. As he had been yet again at the hands of M. “Guilt,” Q said, shocked to his core. “_Guilt_.”

Geordi shrugged again, pushing his now empty sushi tray to the side. “Maybe so.”

Jean-Luc had said it himself, early on. He had said that he knew that what had happened to Q was ‘his fault,’ just like the Nausicaan encounter, just like the day in the woods with the ropes. Jean-Luc thought that he’d failed to protect Q, and he couldn’t stand it. His guilt combined with the radical changes in Q’s life had been more than Jean-Luc could handle alone. _He didn’t _have _to handle it alone, _Q fumed, frowning at his uneaten lunch.

“Hey, Q? Uh, your guest is here. I should go.”

Q startled and looked up. Picard stood there in his room for the first time in many weeks, T’Letch hovering behind him. Geordi picked up his and Q’s trays and dodged artfully out of the room, tossing a quiet “good luck!” behind him. Q scowled at the man’s departing back long after he had disappeared.

T’Letch settled herself in one chair. Jean-Luc located another and joined them in a tight-knit circle. T’Letch touched their psi-points with each hand and murmured the lead-in words. 

The moment their surroundings (not the garden, not the ship conference room, just an empty void with tall, ominous walls all around them) solidified, Q stalked up to his spouse and made a fist, pounding it firmly against the other man’s chest. “_You’re an absolute idiot!”_

Jean-Luc stepped away from the assault, staring at Q in total confusion. “_What are you talking about? Did you con me into this visit to insult me?”_

_“No! I didn’t con you into anything. I’ve been thinking, that’s all, about why my husband--someone I love and respect and need in times of crisis--has been completely ghosting me for months. And I’ve just realized it’s because you’re a stupid, tiny primate with the tiniest, stupidest primate brain in all the universe!” _

Jean-Luc’s lips twitched into a smile. “_So you do mean to insult me, at least.”_

_“Jean-Luc! I’m angry with you!”_

_“I know. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have--”_

_“--I don’t care. I don’t care. Stop ‘shoulding’ all over yourself. You’re a bastard. You know that? You’re selfish and stupid and cruel. I’ve been here. You know that, don’t you? Or did you manage to forget it, keeping yourself good and distracted with important ship business? I’ve been here, in this infirmary, locked in my body, terrified out of my not inconsiderable mind. I _needed_ you.”_

Jean-Luc’s eyes flickered to T’Letch--in apology or seeking aid, Q didn’t know nor care. Q tapped his fist hard against Jean-Luc’s sternum again. 

“_I was working with the admirals. About your future,” _Jean-Luc said, stiff and stilted, betraying a secret he had intended to keep to himself, all to pacify Q. 

Q tapped his fist again. “_I know. And thank you for that, I guess, but I much rather would have had you here, working with _me. _Talking to _me.”

Jean-Luc frowned, obviously about to ask Q how he had possibly known about Jean-Luc’s efforts to reclaim Q’s job.

“_It doesn’t matter!” _Q interrupted. “_I was always going to be a terrible CSO. You know that, I know that. No one should have ever put me in charge of other mortal beings in the first place._”

“_Q, that isn’t--.”_

_“I’m going to get a ship position soon, anyway! Which you would know if you were _ever _here_. _Bev and I have been working to get me up to snuff. It’ll probably be something stationary and dreadfully tame but--.”_

_“‘Bev’?”_

_“Yes, Bev! Beverly Crusher. Or did you forget about her, too?”_

_“Q--.”_

_“Bev, who’s kept me alive the past eight months and counting. Bev, who talks to me and keeps my brain occupied so I don’t go completely insane. Bev, who protected me from others and myself so I wouldn’t overwork and end up worse off than before. Bev, who had to tell me that you do still love me, actually, because how else was I ever going to know, otherwise?”_

Jean-Luc did not interrupt. He stood there, arms folded over his chest, head slightly lowered.

_“And you. There you are. Miles away, feeling so wrong-footed and wracked with guilt that you thought it’d be better to just ignore me. What a stupid man.”_

Jean-Luc took a shaky breath and met Q eye for eye. His gaze was steely, his expression closed. _“Why am I here, Q?” _

“_‘Tell me what you know, Q,’ ‘Get off my ship, Q,’ ‘Why am I here, Q?’” _Q mocked, throwing up his hands _“Can’t you ever say the right things instead of the wrong ones?”_

_“I’ve never told you to get off of my ship.”_

Q snorts an unwelcome laugh. “_My, what a perfect segue. T’Letch, it’s time, please.”_

T’Letch tilted her head in understanding and raised her hands high over her head before dropping them swiftly to her sides. With the movement, every thick, gray stone wall around them shuddered and fell away to nothing but dust. 

_“Hold tight, _mon Capitan,” Q advised, “_This won’t be a steady ride.”_

\--


	8. Chapter 8

Every second of it washes over them like water, cold and suffocating. Every new wave stronger than the last. Pulling. Pressing. Tossing about. T’Letch’s control is perfection, Q’s projection is practiced; they are in no real danger, but the experience is still nothing short of death-defying in its intensity. 

T’Letch pulls herself to the very border of the event, standing guard but allowing the two men at the eye of the storm their moment of pseudo-privacy. 

_You’re guilty. Guilty of what? Being inferior. If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid. You're not alone, you know. What you were, and what you are to become, will always be with you._

_You're dead, this is the afterlife, and I'm God._

_The trial never ends. _

There is more, of course. Q has torn down _all_ of his walls. There is more to his existence than Picard and his little ship. There are eons and eons of his existence, mostly forgotten by Q’s puny Human brain, but not all. There are planets made and destroyed. There are lives saved and ended. There are mysteries revealed and secrets locked away and there is pain and there is joy and there is, throughout so much of it all, a thread of aching, awful loneliness. 

_Because in all the universe, you're the closest thing I have to a friend, Jean-Luc._

Somewhere in the midst of the deluge, Jean-Luc jerks bodily away from Q, lifting his hands as if to ward the other man away. Q starts forward, confused by the reaction, but understanding comes quickly, hitting hard like the hammer Q has been waiting to drop all day. 

_“The Borg,” _Jean-Luc chokes, covering his face with his hands, falling to his knees with an anguished cry of total terror. These are the monsters that sleep under the bed, these are the beasts that burrow into the brain. These are--.

Q tangles the memories up in his fingers and snaps them out of the churning of the storm, locking the Borg away like the monsters in Pandora’s famed box. _“I’m sorry.” _He says, short and simple, and he leaves it at that. He had not returned to Picard during and after his time as Locutus. He had been too...ashamed. 

(Q do not, as a rule, muck about with such an emotion. And, yet. And, yet. Perhaps that had been the first nail in Q’s coffin, his first shaky, immoral step toward mortality.)

“_That’s enough, Q,” _Jean-Luc shouts. He shouts over the noise of Q’s recollections, not in fear. The Borg are locked away, and he no longer feels afraid. If only it had been so easy before, in the former timeline. “_Q, I have seen enough.”_

Q looks to T’Letch, who appears rather pale, and gives a nod. Obligingly, T’Letch raises her arms once more, and the walls rise with her. Immediately, their shared mindscape goes dark and still.

\--

Q waved a hand. The familiar expanse of the Academy gardens shimmered into being around them. On shaky legs, Q approached the nearest of the benches and sat down with a dull thud. Soon after, Jean-Luc followed him. 

“_I apologize, but I must end the meld now. That was a highly taxing experience.” “You don’t say” _Jean-Luc muttered.

The meld ended abruptly. T’Letch stood, swaying slightly, and excused herself. “I must meditate. Later, Q, we will speak of this.” And she left.

The silence in the small room laid upon them heavy as an elephant. Q fidgeted in his bed, pulling his left knee up to his chest and hugging it with his left arm, resting his chin on his bent knee for support. He wanted to curl up completely, like a mortal fetus, but he lacked the coordination and the strength, especially after such a ‘taxing’ mental experience. “...Questions?”

Jean-Luc jerked slightly in his seat. He had been pulled out of his thoughts, certainly, but Q also suspected that he was not used to Q speaking words that he meant to speak when he meant to speak them. How could he be? Jean-Luc had not been in attendance for those particular breakthroughs. To his mind, Q’s aphasia was still in its peak, robbing him entirely of meaningful voice.

“Many.”

“Ask.”

Jean-Luc sighed, dragging his hands over his face in, likely in frustration and exhaustion both. “Where do I even begin?”

“Doesn’t matter.” Q frowned a bit, mouthing a few syllables in silence before managing, with difficulty. “Time. N-not lines. No. Lines. No, no. Linear. Linear. Not linear.”

Jean-Luc snorted softly at the attempted jest. “Yes. I saw that. Non-linear time. Multiple universes. Planets, built and broken again as if made of nothing more than clay. Did you care so little? What about the life? What about--?”

Q frowned. “Ire--Ire--?”

“‘Irrelevant.’ Yes. I suppose it is, at the moment. Let me get to the heart of it, then, and save us all the trouble: Why? Why did you do what you did, Q? Was it one of those games you played? All part of that, that _trial _of yours?” Jean-Luc sat rigid and cold, anger in every line of his body. Of course he found the memory of Q’s courtroom triggering; it had, after all, been nearly exact to what M had put them all through. 

“M-missed you,” Q said. 

Jean-Luc could not appear any more incredulous if he tried. 

“Did. Missed you. Couldn’t...l-live. Not. Not without you.”

“I died. I lived a life and got old and died, and you couldn’t continue on in your eternal existence without me there. Q. Surely you must understand how unreasonable and unlikely that seems, having seen all that I have now seen.”

“Loved you,” Q argued. “More than. More than--.”

“More than your own people. More than your _son_. More than your wife. God, Q. No wonder she wished to destroy you, atom by atom. I would, in her place. Do you even understand her pain?”

“No regrets,” Q whispered, looking away. 

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“Lost you. I understand pain.”

Jean-Luc looked away, as well, staring up at the ceiling, instead. “I can hardly wrap my mind around this, you know. You were a child. A grubby little urchin who kept saving my life. My friend. ...My mother thought you were some sort of Changeling, you know. Not Human. Something fae and mercurial. Possibly dangerous. I didn’t believe such nonsense; I thought you were abandoned or abused, maybe, something _real_. And all this time, _Mère _was right. I wish she were still alive. I would like to tell her that much, at least.”

“Friend,” Q singled out, nodding. It seemed important, in that moment, to remind the other man of that.

“My friend,” Jean-Luc agreed. “And my brother. And my lover. The other part of my very soul, Q. And now...how do I accept this? That you were some sort of deity--an actual god!--who gambled away your very being to be near me. Just so that I would understand you? Love you?”

“Yes.” Q shrugged. It was true enough, after all.

“You destroyed an entire universe to be with me.”

“Yes.”

“That’s monstrous.”

Q flinched. “Yes.”

Jean-Luc stood. Q leaned toward him immediately, good arm outstretched. “No! Wait.”

Jean-Luc did not wait. “I need time.” 

Q let his left hand drop. He wanted to rail, to argue, to shout. They were mortal beings with little time to waste. Jean-Luc couldn’t have more time. He had already taken so much of it. Q had sacrificed so much to have time _with_ Jean-Luc, not apart from him. It was more than he could bear. But he kept still, kept silent, and watched Captain Picard walk out the door.

\--

La Barre. A rainy day. Quiet, save for the lulling white noise of rain pattering against the roof. The storm is a gentle one; the grapes will prosper for it with no concerns about ravage to the vines. 

Jean-Luc Picard practically dances in the kitchen, swerving around the equally mobile figure of his mother. Together, they step lightly from counter to cool-box to oven and back. Yvette tosses her son four eggs. Jean-Luc catches them all with ease and turns to the large blue bowl before him, cracking the eggs in one-handed as he had been taught. While he stirs the batter, Yvette sings a nonsense song from her own childhood, slicing up bits of fruit with a deft and steady hand.

In almost any other home in almost any other town on the planet Earth, they’d be prodding coordinates into the food replicator, right now--if nothing else, the ingredients would be simulated. But La Barre is an old fashioned place, far from true civilization. Her people cook and clean and fend for themselves with little to no technology to aid them. The fruit is fresh from a neighbor’s trees; the eggs were laid just yesterday by the Picard’s own hens.

Q perches himself on the far edge of the kitchen counter, far out of the way of the breakfast bustle, and watches Jean-Luc with a steady, unblinking gaze. He has watched Jean-Luc help his mother in the kitchen hundreds of times before--he has even helped, to some extent, himself--but something about today feels unique. 

Jean-Luc will turn fifteen, next week. Time passes strangely in the mortal world, quick as a hare and sluggish as a tortoise all at once. Q feels that the young man before him is a stranger, he has grown so fast. And, yet, this very afternoon stretches out languid and soft as taffy in a pull, as if this one damp day might last for eons, if allowed. 

Next year, Jean-Luc will be of age to apply to Starfleet. It’s all that he and Q have talked about for months and months. Finally, Jean-Luc’s destiny is at hand. Q must admit, though, that he will miss their time in La Barre more than he had expected.

“Q,” Yvette says, interrupting her own distracted humming. “Be useful and set the table.”

“Yes, Q, be useful,” Jean-Luc teases, grinning at his friend.

Q rolls his eyes but doesn’t argue. He learned early on the futility of arguing with any Picard, Yvette especially. For most of his childhood, he had scrambled in and out of Jean-Luc’s window, a strange foundling who was more a hidden shadow than a flesh and blood child. As he and Jean-Luc grew, however, that changed. 

Q had only been somewhat resentful to discover that if he wished to follow Jean-Luc to Starfleet Academy, he would have to follow Jean-Luc to primary and secondary school, as well. And when school days had started, meals at the Picard family table had as well.

He purposely bumps into Jean-Luc’s shoulder while reaching for the plates. Jean-Luc huffs a laugh and threatens to drop a dollop of crepe batter in Q’s hair.

“Boys,” Yvette scolds with fond and familiar exasperation. Q picks up his stack of plates and swans out of the room to their small dining table, a beautiful wooden set seating four with one extra, mismatched chair borrowed from the living room. Q’s chair, sitting squashed into a space into which he has squeezed himself for years and years.

By the time Q has placed the last fork, Jean-Luc trots out to the table, too, a large platter of still-warm crepes in hand. Sliced fruits and freshly whipped cream follow. The three of them are joined by Picard senior and Jean-Luc’s brother soon enough, both of them freshly washed and dried after coming in drenched and muddy from their toils in the fields. Picard senior--Q does not often think of either Jean-Luc’s father or his brother by their names; for the most part, he tries to avoid them completely--bows his head. All around the table, they join hands. Jean-luc’s is warm and familiar and comfortable in Q’s own, as it is over every meal. Grace is spoken, brisk and detached of any real meaning, as far as Q is concerned, and they eat.

Meals with Jean-Luc’s father attending are quiet affairs. He does not encourage what he considers idle chatter across the table. Later, over a late lunch, while the two men are back at work in the vineyards, Jean-Luc and Yvette and Q will have the dining table to themselves. Grace will still be spoken (with softness and reverence, this time, by Yvette), but there will be no silence, afterward. If anything, lunches in the Picard household tend to be boisterous, as if in direct opposition to the silent oppression of breakfast and supper.

Later, after, Jean-Luc and Q busy themselves with the dishes. Q washes and Jean-Luc dries and they swap positions every meal. It is an old, habitual routine. The soapy water makes Q’s scarred hands prune and sting, but he stopped complaining about it ages ago. Now, it is just another mundane aspect of his mortal life. Chapped and red-raw palms are a small price to pay for such a warm moment--Jean-Luc and he together in their shared home, listening to the rain in a companionable silence that is broken only by shared gazes and soft, unprovoked giggles between them. 

“It’s been a good morning,” Q says, thoughtfully, as he hands Jean-Luc a freshly rinsed mug.

“Yes,” Jean-Luc agrees, his smile open and warm. “It has.”

\--

Q woke and, for a moment, felt disoriented by his surroundings. He half expected the soft patter of rain on the roof and the lingering scent of freshly-made crepes. Instead, the sounds and scents of the infirmary assaulted him, familiar but also strange as he ascended slowly from the soft entanglement of the dream. 

He dug his elbows into the sides of his bed and tried, in vain, to leverage himself into a sitting position. His body felt weighed down with tons of rock, unable to so much as twitch under his voluntary command. With a sigh, he allowed himself to lie fully prone, staring up at the ceiling with a scowl. 

Q’s gaze flickered over to Crusher and back to the ceiling. He felt stiff and sore and sullen, thrown into the prickliness he used to feel around Crusher all the time, before his encounter with M. The old, brittle emotion was almost comforting. It reminded him of better days.

“Q,” Bev greeted. She helped him to sit up and click the VISOR into place.

Q ignored her. She was not the person he had hoped to see.

Crusher sighed. In that moment, without looking at her, Q could almost imagine it was Yvette standing at his bedside, instead. She, too, had sighed that way in response to his actions, most days. 

The memory-dream had left him cradling lingering thoughts of the long-dead woman. He could admit, if only to himself, that he missed Yvette Picard. She had been a remarkable person, truly, to allow him to haunt her home like a ghost and trail behind her son like a shadow, trouble always rising in their wake. She had loved Jean-Luc. Therefore, she had loved his odd Changeling friend, too. 

Yvette and Beverly Crusher were not so different, in that way.

“Bev,” Q said, to the ceiling. He could hear her rustling at his feet even though he could not feel her fingers as they ran up the arch of his right foot. 

“Yes?”

“Sorry.”

Crusher’s fingers ran up the arch of Q’s left foot, which automatically twitched. He curled his toes and made a soft sound of complaint at the tickling sensation. 

“Your right side has regressed. Left side seems about the same. I’ll have to check in on you throughout the day. Have you been pushing yourself in my absence? Yesterday’s report didn’t seem much different than usual.”

Q lifted his shoulder. Outside of the meld with Picard, he’d done nothing out of the ordinary as of late.

Bev’s distress read clear in the light of her form in the VISOR’s readings. She tapped her stylus against the edge of her PADD, the motion leaving a tiny light trail in its wake on every downstroke. Q watched the motion.

“I heard about the meld. I don’t know what you two discussed, of course, but I know Jean-Luc left in a rush. You know, at this point, the way Jean-Luc is behaving borders on neglect. I’ve half a mind to report him to Starfleet over it.”

Q stared at her, eyes wide. That was absurd.

Even with the VISOR between them, Beverly seemed to read his expression with ease. “Don’t look at me that way. I know he has good intentions--Jean-Luc would never have anything but--but the road to hell is, as they say, paved with those. A stern call from a ‘Fleet lawyer might shake him out of his own self-pity and stubbornness long enough to realize that he’s being an ass.”

Q shook his head. He never thought he’d see the day when Beverly Crusher would support him--the meddling, unpleasant jerk who had gotten her husband killed--over Jean-Luc Picard, whom she secretly loved and openly regarded more highly than any other man. Or, at least, so Q had always thought. Perhaps he had assumed too much of her obvious crush, all these years. Perhaps he had underestimated her capacity for empathy and forgiveness, as well. “No.”

“I won’t make the call. But I want to.” Because she cared, because she was worried, because she wanted to help him.

“Thanks,” Q said, but it didn’t feel right. Jean-Luc wasn’t at fault. Bev didn’t know the whole story. If she did, she wouldn’t be in Q’s corner; he felt certain of that.

“I do think you should let myself or Deanna help,” Bev said, breaking into Q’s morose thoughts. “Deanna has mentioned couple’s counseling to me as an option, before.”

Q grimaced. Jean-Luc would hate that. And, quite frankly, Q would, too. Airing out their dirty laundry was not Jean-Luc’s style, and Q himself had no desire to tread and retread old ground with a man who could barely stand to be in the same room with him, now.

“Yes, I don’t think either of you will care for that, much. But it could be beneficial.”

Most things that were beneficial were also equally painful. Q had learned that lesson better than any other in his time as a mortal being.

\--

Q hissed in distress as Beverly and two of her heartier nurses manhandled him, forcing the pinching, strangling bands of specialized metal around his right-side arm and leg. The loops hit at his shoulder, elbow, wrist, hip, knee, and ankle. 

“I know it’s a snug fit,” Beverly said with sympathy even as she pressed her palm down against his head and forcibly held it against his pillow. “You’ll get used to it.”

Ah, yes. A phrase Q had heard often the past few weeks. 

“Okay. There, that part’s done. Do you need a break?”

Q’s eyes twitched behind the VISOR, peering at the digital chronometer on the wall. 

“Don’t worry about the time,” Bev instructed. “They literally can’t start without you.”

Q wouldn’t _mind_ Picard going through their first marriage counseling session without him, actually.

“Q. Pay attention. Do you want a break or not?”

Q shook his head. Better to get it over with, like with the integration of the VISOR. The sooner they turned the damn things on, the sooner he’d ‘get used to it’ and get out of the infirmary for good.

It was strange, how uneasy the thought made him. Like it or not, the infirmary had become his home somewhere during his nearly ten months of confinement within its walls. 

“Okay. Let’s sit him up, first.”

Q’s world tilted upright as the two burly nurses pushed and pulled him upright. He glanced down the expanse of his folded arm and bended knee. The assistive devices appeared in his VISOR reading as little more than strange voids, blackness cutting through the glowing light of his body heat at every joint.

“Here we go,” Beverly warned. 

The bands buzzed to life. At first, the vibrations were jarring, but they soon settled into a mild purr, no more bothersome than the thrum of the _Enterprise’s _engines. 

“Lift your arm.”

Q lifted his left arm.

Beverly pinched his ear. “The _other_ one, smartass.”

Q grinned at her, unrepentant, and lowered his ‘good’ arm. Slowly, with concentration, he directed the VISORs attention on the bands around his arm. Just like the small, pink spherical toy that Geordi had rewired for him, the bands activated at his mental push. His right arm, previously limp and entirely disconnected from his control, lifted.

Beverly made a small, happy sound. “Good. Can you lift it any higher?”

Q frowned. He couldn’t feel where his arm was in relation to the space around him. He’d thought the limb already fully extended. 

Geordi spoke up for the first time since bringing the device in. “Your fist is about parallel with your ear, right now.”

Ah. Q imagined that pose in his mind and directed the bands to lift the limb higher. He could feel the pull, that time, as a distant pressure, when the limb straightened fully out and his fist lifted high over his head.

“Good. Don’t push it, though. Remember, the muscles are atrophied. The anti-gravity bands were a great idea, and they’ll work in a pinch while we consider other more long-term options for your recovery. But you don’t want to rely on them completely, all right? You need to let your body heal as much as possible, and that means making it work on its own power as much as we can.”

Q sighed. The lectures, he would not miss. “Walk?” he pressed, impatiently.

Data purposefully made more noise than usual as he tromped over into Q’s line of sight. The android held out his arm, ready and willing to play the part of Q’s crutch, hopefully for the last time.

Q slid off his bed with a wiggle and rested all of his weight between his left side and Data’s solid presence on his right. “Okay.”

The bands on his legs activated with the same sharp vibration that then fell away into a silent purr. Q thought about the process of walking, of bending the knee and letting it straighten, of his ankle following suit, his foot rocking against the floor beneath him with a step. His left foot took the lead and, jerkily, his right leg followed suit. Data remained near him for the first few steps and then politely backed away, letting Q maneuver on his own. 

Q crashed rather hard with his target point--an empty bed across the room--but that did nothing to quell the thrill of victory coursing through his veins. He rested his elbows on the mattress and closed his eyes tight, suddenly aware that he might cry if given half the chance.

Beverly rested her hand on his shoulder. He knew it was her because of the lightness of the touch and the vaguely floral scent of her shampoo. 

“I’d like to escort you to Deanna’s office to make sure you’re stable. Is that all right?”

Strange, to be asked instead of told.

“Yeah,” Q agreed, faintly. 

He couldn’t see Beverly’s smiles in the glowing readings of the VISOR, but he could feel the joy in her all the same. It echoed back at him as Geordi cupped the nape of his neck in his palm and reminded him, gently, to come by sometime soon to make sure the anti-gravity device’s calibrations were right. Q could feel it even in the so-called emotionless Data as the android helped Q trade his well-worn patient’s garb for civvies and a pair of real, actual shoes (soft soled slippers though they might be). 

“It is a pair of dark brown trousers and a knitted sweater in red,” Data described helpfully when asked. “The slippers are brown, also. Does that serve?”

Q smiled slightly. He hadn’t worn red in a long time. “It’s good,” he assured. “Later, dinner? Geordi, you, me?”

Data nodded. “We thought you might wish to attempt Ten Forward. Or your quarters, if you are too tired by that time.”

_My quarters_, Q mused. And where were those, these days, exactly? “Sure,” he agreed. They could sort out the specifics at another time. Right then, he had bigger fish to fry.

Beverly stood waiting for him at the lift. Q didn’t shy away as the doors closed and she held out her hand to him. He took it, cupping their palms together. Someone--probably one of Jean-Luc’s terrifyingly old-fashioned neighbors in La Barre--had told him that was how platonic friends held hands. Lovers interlaced their fingers. He and Picard used to do that.

“You’re pale.”

Q turned his head toward her, lifting a brow. 

“Well, you are.”

In just a few minutes, Q would be baring his soul not only to his angry, distant spouse but also to Deanna Troi. As far as Q knew, neither T’Letch nor Picard had shared his secret outside of their meld. The thought of Deanna, of all people, knowing what he had done, the price he had paid, filled Q with unease. He trusted her to uphold her sacred confidentiality, of course. Eventually, though, the truth would have to come out to all and sundry. And, when it did, would all of his relationships, every friendship and connection, fall away like so much dust?

And when had that become just as if not more terrible than the mere thought of losing Picard?

“Q,” Beverly said, forcing his attention away from his somber thoughts. “You’re safe here. You know that, don’t you? No one on this ship, especially the captain, would ever mean you harm.”

Strange. So strange, to hear that. He remembers his brief flirtation with mortality while on this ship in the previous timeline--the way the crew had treated him with such disdain, how they had been almost happy to see the back of him when he’d tried to surrender and die at his enemy’s hands. They’d been more worried about the small ship he’d stolen than his own safety, then.

Not that he’d deserved anything more or less than that, at the time.

_The more things change, _Q thought to himself, with dry amusement. Hadn’t M said as such?

“I know,” Q agreed, faintly.

The turbolift doors opened. Deanna stood just on the other side of them. Recently, she’d taken to wearing a civilian costume more in line with the cut and design of the Starfleet uniform. Q could only make out the difference because of the way the light readings shifted around her, the silhouette markedly unlike the tight, body-close cling of her former attire. He liked this better. But he wouldn’t dare remark on it one way or the other.

“Hello, Q,” Deanna greeted, warm as always. He wondered, sometimes, what great lengths she must go to outside of her working hours to relieve all the stress she must certainly feel but, somehow, never betrayed, while on duty. 

“Hi,” he replied. He glanced past her shoulder, but no one stood there. “...Jean-Luc?”

The glow of Deanna’s body went sour, somehow, all the colors shifting. He imagined that her expression might match it, lips drawn down, eyes narrowed in her displeasure. Then, the colors shifted back to a steadier, more friendly hue. “He’s delayed. But he’ll come.” Her tone made it clear that she would accept nothing less.

“Right,” Q said. He turned on his left heel to face Bev. “I’m good now.”

Beverly let go of his hand. “Comm me if you need me, all right?”

Q nodded. And, to his surprise, he knew he would follow through on that promise. It helped that he knew that, should he call, she would come--and probably running, at that. Q waited for the turbolift doors to close, sending Beverly away, before turning back to Deanna. He stepped forward toward her slightly, mostly to show off.

Deanna obligingly made all the expected noises of surprise and appreciation. “That’s very good! How do you feel in them?”

“Weird,” Q admitted. He paused a moment. “Human, again.”

He could read Deanna’s smile as a pull of red and white light. “I suppose that’s a good thing.”

“Good for a Human.”

Deanna did not, yet, understand the current of dark humor she must have felt in that statement. She would, though, in an hour or so. 

“Let’s go ahead and get comfortable in my office, shall we? The captain knows the way.”

Q followed her. His steps were slow and awkward, but she slowed her own gait down to match him. “Does he?”

Deanna hummed. “I couldn’t actually tell you, obviously.”

“Obv--obvi--.” Q sighed, giving it up. 

Deanna gracefully let his momentary lapse in speech go. His functional verbal vocabulary remained limited. It was a fact of life that he was, despite himself, getting used to (damn that phrase). Those he knew best seemed to be adapting right along with him. That, at least, provided some relief. He wasn’t nearly so embarrassed, knowing that.

“He’s had a few sessions with me, before. Most of the crew has. That’s all I can say.”

Q panted softly by the time they made it across the threshold of Deanna’s office. The couch cushions were a welcome relief as he all but tossed his body down into them. 

“Are you all right?”

Q nodded. “It’s...work.”

Deanna went to the replicator and ordered a glass of water. Q took it in his left hand and sipped at it several times before the thought to thank her even occurred to him, and by then it was too late to try.

Q referenced the VISOR’s background inputs. Jean-Luc--Picard?--was officially late.

“He’ll be here,” Deanna assured, probably reading his anxiety and making her own deductions from there.

“And...not?”

Deanna fidgeted in her seat. “Then we talk, you and me, about what you need moving forward.”

“Quarters,” Q said, dismally. 

Deanna hesitated a moment before nodding. “I’m sure that can be easily arranged. If needed.”

Q took a deep, steadying breath. “Broke a universe,” he told her, as levelly as possible. “To save him. To be with him.”

“Is that a metaphor?” she asked. “Or the aphasia, perhaps?”

“No.”

Deanna’s silence grew very long. “I see.”

It took an age to communicate in flighty, flat language what had been so easily presented in the mindmeld. Their allotted hour ticked over into two by the time the story had been laid out straight between Q and the counselor. Deanna sat board-stiff in her chair, her tone just as rigid. Q slumped in his own seat, beyond exhausted and struggling to push past the building pain in his limbs and skull.

Deanna’s comm beeped.

“Troi here.”

“Counselor,” Jean-Luc’s voice said from the badge, voice tinny and sharp through the tiny speaker. 

Q snapped upright so abruptly that his teeth clacked together. 

“You’ve missed your appointment, captain,” Deanna said, admirably free of accusation or understanding, either way.

“Yes. I’m sorry. A small emergency arose. It’s been taken care of, now. Can we reschedule?”

Deanna peered at Q. He could not see her eyes clearly, of course, but he could feel the steady, laser-like burn of her gaze on him all the same. “No, sir. I don’t think that’s necessary, at this time. Later, perhaps.”

A pause. “I see. Well, thank you. And I’m sorry for the inconvenience.”

“Not at all,” Deanna replied, and the connection closed with a beep. 

“Deanna?” Q asked. Was she so disgusted by him? Would she really not help him to reconcile with Jean-Luc, now that she knew what Q had done?

Q flinched when the Betazoid woman stood. He braced himself for the worst when she stepped toward him, and felt only confusion when she sat down on the couch beside him, so close their shoulders brushed. 

“I’m not angry with you, Q,” Deanna said, softly. Q breathed out a sigh of relief at that simple reassurance. He could tell she wasn’t lying--he could feel the barest brush of her emotions, thanks to the closeness of their bodies.

“Then…?”

“I think we have a lot to talk about before you’d be ready to work with Jean-Luc head on.”

“We d-do?”

Deanna sighed softly. “A lot,” she repeated.

Q had no idea what she could possibly mean. But he trusted her. “Okay.”

“Tomorrow,” Deanna said, no doubt taking in the pain-filled set of his spine and the tremor of exhaustion in his hands. “Until then, let’s call the quartermaster and see if we can find you a nice room of your own, all right?”

\--

He pressed the badge before he was even entirely awake.

“Q?”

Beverly sounded drowsy. She likely revelled in the chance at a proper night’s sleep, her hours no longer skewed by Q’s constant need for supervision by the CMO herself. Q’s shoulders crept up to his ears, guilt twisting in his gut.

“Q?” Beverly repeated, sounding more awake. “Are you all right?”

Why had he called her? A nightmare. Was it? He could hardly remember. It drifted out of his reach. The more he sought it out, the further it fell away. 

His head and body ached. He’d fallen asleep with the VISOR and the anti-gravity braces on. He always forgot to disconnect them, to remove the hardware. He was afraid of waking in the middle of the night and not being able to see or move. The process of turning the device on and settling it over the nodes took full minutes. He couldn’t imagine being left so wrong footed in the middle of the night. What if someone--what if M--?

His door chimed. He opened it without asking who it was. He half expected Beverly. Or maybe even that Broccoli man who lived across the hall--he may have heard Q making a ruckus and come to check on him. It wouldn’t be the first time.

Jean-Luc stared at him. Q stared back. The connecting threads of light between them had gone all wrong since the last time they had shared physical space. Q could hardly see the glow. Such knowledge filled him with a dull terror, even though he knew that what the VISOR revealed in those strange strands of light were nothing but his own subconscious perceptions. What he saw--or didn’t see, more truthfully--only reflected his own feelings toward Jean-Luc and nothing more. He expected them to be disconnected, set adrift. And, so, they were.

“I didn’t think you’d be awake.”

Q stepped back, making room for Jean-Luc to pass the threshold. But he didn’t. He lingered out in the hall. “You rang.”

Jean-Luc’s light flickered. Irritation, maybe. Probably at himself, for presumably waking Q up.

“I--didn’t think it through. I should let you rest.”

Q wanted to reach out, to pull Jean-Luc back to him, to hold him still and make him see reason--whatever ‘reason’ might mean. Q himself didn’t have a clue. But his sessions with Deanna over the past few weeks had made a few things clear to him, if little else. 

_“Maybe it’s time to stop being his shadow, Q. Maybe it’s time to let him come to you and not the other way around.”_

In the previous timeline, Picard had never gone to Q willingly. Q had always pressed the advantage, had made the first move over and over again, hoping that someday, somehow, the mortal man would at least meet him halfway. But Picard never did. And then Picard grew old. And then he died. And Q had still been right there, ready to follow him into the dark.

An old piece of Terran pop culture flickered through his memory and away again, as they were won’t to do. _Don’t go where I can’t follow_. But Frodo had. And so had Picard. Q, though, had more options than a Hobbit--he’d simply made a new road and started over again, following in the light, for once, making himself invaluable, making himself loved.

Q closed his eyes behind the VISOR, though it did nothing to prevent the rush of input filtering directly into his mind. No wonder Picard--this one and the other one--hated him. He waited for the door to close behind the other man, to be left alone in his room once more. 

“Q?” Beverly’s voice rang through his badge, small with worry.

Q pressed his left hand against it. “I’m fine. Sorry for waking you. Goodnight.”

“You called Dr. Crusher?” Picard asked, clearly surprised.

Q was surprised, too. Surprised the captain was still there, lingering in his doorway, speaking to him of trivial matters as if their lives were not in pieces around them both. “Yes. When I need help.”

“Right,” Picard said, distantly. “Of course.”

A long pause paced restless as a hungry beast between them.

“You--the--you seem to be doing well.”

Q looked away, reading the sensory input from his bedroom floor instead of Picard’s twitchy figure. “Yes.” And that was truthful enough, wasn’t it? He was fine. Bev had signed him off with a (relatively) full bill of health the day he’d moved into his new room. In two months, Starfleet HQ would be sending a pencil pusher to assess his capabilities and determine his professional future on the ship. Q didn’t expect much from the encounter, but he knew he’d at least be given a low-level research role in the science department. If nothing else, it would pass the time. Picard must know all of this, though. He was the captain. All of the arrangements must have required his overview, at some point. So why was he here, asking questions he knew the answer to?

“It must be difficult.”

Q waited for the rest, but it didn’t come. “What?”

Picard’s gaze flickered past his shoulder. Q could tell by his body language that the man wanted to come in.

This time, when Q stepped back, Picard passed over the threshold. The door whooshed shut. Q waved his left hand around in the air. “Sit.”

They perched on two distinct pieces of furniture, a few feet and a thousand unsaid words lying open and vast between them. 

“To be mortal and...vulnerable. It must be difficult for you.”

Q frowned. “Yes?” 

Picard curled his fists and rubbed them against his knees in a rhythmic manner. Q followed the trail of light the motion inspired in his manufactured gaze. “I was angry, at first. You see, I took everything I saw in the meld on the macro level. I saw the forest of it--the grander scale of what you had traded away for the opportunity to--to--_insert_ yourself into my life.”

Q winced but he didn’t deny it. He sat, still and waiting for the other, more painful shoe to fall.

“I saw all of what had suffered for your selfishness. A whole universe full of lives, destroyed and rebuilt in an image that suited you better. I saw the pain and suffering of others all orchestrated by your hand.” Picard paused. He stood up from his seat and started to pace in tight arcs. “What I failed to see, in all of that, were the concessions you yourself made in the bargaining, as well. The trees, so to speak.”

Q’s jaw went slack in his confusion. “What?” he asked, swallowing against a dry throat.

“Your life, Q. Thousands upon thousands of years of life, lost. Eons of collected wisdom. Incalculable heights of power. An entity bordering on godhood, wiped out of existence for the sake of--well. For me.”

Q wanted to stand and pace, too, but such casual physical activity was a luxury he could no longer afford. Instead, he sank his teeth against the fleshy pad of his left thumb, rendered tense and speechless by the unexpected direction of this interaction. 

Picard whirled on his heel, finally meeting Q eye for eye, though Q did not much care for how the standing man loomed over him while he was stuck sitting down. The thought made Q look away in shame. He’d once taken far too much smug joy in towering over Picard, putting the height of his Human disguise to good use.

_What’s the saying about how the mighty fall? Hard, I think. Funny, actually, since my falls were all literal, too. _

“Karma,” Q muttered, darkly.

“Don’t,” Picard replied, softly. “I understand, now, how you might see everything that has befallen you this past year as an earned punishment. Seeing the full extent of the crime, it’s a wonder that M didn’t do even worse.”

Q’s lips twisted at that, for all that he agreed with Picard’s words. He didn’t like to think of it in such a light, his mind churning over all the ways in which M could have truly dug in the knife, the lengths she would have gone to if the rest of her Continuum hadn’t intervened. 

“But that does _not _mean that I’m happy about what was done to you,” Picard pressed. “It gives me no satisfaction. My heart aches knowing what was sold away in return for my second chance at a long and prosperous existence. But your current state does nothing to ease that pain. M was not contented by your punishment, in the end. And neither am I.”

Q startled at that, only glad that the other man had made his statement in a level, unassuming tone. If spoken with any anger or bitterness at all, such words would sound unmistakably like a threat. “...It’s...not eno-enough? You want more?” He paused and asked, far more tentatively. “Will that...no. Fix. Fix it?” Q would subject himself to infinite suffering, if Picard required it to stand at his side again.

Picard’s immediate, sharp “No!” did little to put Q at ease. Picard sunk to his knees before Q without warning, taking Q’s hands in his own. Q went tense at the unexpected touch, tempted to pull away. He didn’t. 

“I’m not making myself clear to you,” Picard said, his frustration obvious. “Listen, then, Q. I’ll make it very simple: What you’ve done can not _ever_ be fixed. No amount of suffering on your part, no amount of service, nothing you do or say will ever make it right.”

Q did pull back, at that. Picard let him. But Picard didn’t stand up. He didn’t move away. He stayed kneeling, tilting his head and forcing Q to meet his eyes, even though Q could not clearly see them. 

“M didn’t understand that when the scope of the crime is immeasurable, there is no justice to be done. You have not experienced some sort of karmic backlash for your actions, Q. It wouldn’t be possible, considering the extent of your transgressions.”

Q nodded, rather too vigorously, hoping that the assurance he understood would make Picard stop turning the metaphorical screws. 

“And that means that I must stop trying to punish you,” Picard said, voice softened. “It’s a futile endeavor for M or myself or anyone to seek justice on you now. I’m sorry I didn’t realize that sooner. I’m sorry I’ve been piling on to the damage that M left behind. All of my silences, all my absence--none of it had any use at all, in the end. You’re past punishment. And that, I think, means that forgiveness is the only option left.”

Q pushed past Picard’s kneeling form, taking several wobbly steps away from him, his left hand raised in an open, universal gesture of surrender. His right arm, too tired to behave even with the assistance of the anti-gravity braces, may have lifted slightly, but Q couldn’t tell without looking, and right then his eyes were glued to Picard’s kneeling form.

“Don’t. I d-don’t deser--deserve--.”

“No, you don’t.” Picard agreed. He rose to his feet. Q both admired and resented his fluidity of motion. “But you’ll have it, anyway, because there’s nothing else that I can give. I forgive you, Q.”

Q stepped back as Picard stepped forward. Q’s knees hit the edge of his bed, eventually, and he crumpled instantly.

Picard sat next to him on the mattress. It was familiar, deeply so. A lifetime of moments like this one stretched behind them. Sitting side by side, seeing the world from as nearly the same vantage point as possible when occupying two separate souls.

“Was I so blind to you? The other me? Was I so distant, so out of your reach, that _this_ was the only answer?”

“Wasn’t. Didn’t plan it.” Q pulled his hands together in his lap and kept his gaze on his fingers. “Just watching. But then--.”

“I remember. I hurt myself in the woods. That’s why you came out from hiding, isn’t it?”

Q nodded. “Broke the rules. To be fair…?”

“They should have expected that from you, yes,” Picard agreed.

Q wet his lips. “Counseling. Does this mean?”

Picard sighed, drawing his hands down his face. Q could see the light trail of the motion from the corner of the VISOR’s input. “I would prefer not to, you know.”

“Troi knows truth. Told her.”

“Just her?”

Q lifted a shoulder. It didn’t lift very far. His body felt heavy, too past its endurance to move easily. “Yeah.”

“What was her response?”

Q turned his gaze up to the ceiling, the closest thing he could get to experiencing the comforting blackness that closing his eyes once brought. “Kind.”

Picard huffed a soft laugh. “Yes. I suppose that’s to be expected. I want to mend our bridges, as impossible is it seems at the moment to do so. If you think working with the counselor is the way to achieve that, then I’m agreeable. I’ll be on time.”

A simple statement, presented in a cool tone. Q resisted the urge to draw his arm around himself. Picard was trying, after all. And Q’s long history of grievances against the other man--even if some of them were made against another version of Picard entirely--created an understandably tall and formidable wall between them, now. The Borg alone--.

\--Q shuddered at that thought and pushed it aside. 

“You’re tired,” Picard remarked, though hesitantly, as if unsure of his place.

Q nodded. Of course he was tired. All he ever felt, most days, was a progressive sense of exhaustion, weighing him down by degrees. 

Picard stood. “I’ll--.”

Q grabbed at the sleeve of the man’s uniform. Even in the fingers of his good left hand, his already once compromised grip--a malady that had very nearly cost him his position at the Academy--was rendered weaker than before. He had no hope whatsoever of forestalling Picard. But the man went still at his touch, regardless, as if his hold had weight.

“Don’t go,” Q begged, uncaring of the way his voice cracked with the force of his plea, how his hand trembled, how pathetic he must seem to a man for whom he’d already fallen greatly in general estimation. “Please.”

Q could hear the response already, could play it pitch-perfect in his mind. _I can’t do that, Q. _He could picture the steady, severe expression that would go with it, the hard purse of the lips before and after the words were said.

It took him long, ringing moments to realize that the words in his actual ear were something else entirely. 

It took him even longer to realize that his imaginings had worn the hard, impenetrable armor of the former Picard, the man who had been lost. The man who had not known Q since childhood. The man who had not had Q at his heels all his life, devoted to a fault. The man who had seen Q only as a far-too-powerful nuisance, a threat to the people under his care. The man who did not exist and, technically, never had. 

The man who looked down on Q now had soft, sad eyes and a frown twisted down only by regret, not anger or irritation or a myriad other more terrible emotions. “I won’t. The bed is quite small,” this Picard, the _real_ Picard, _Q’s_ Picard said. “I’m afraid I might hurt you.”

Q barked out a dry, bitter laugh. Picard flinched but didn’t pull away.

“Any more than I have already, I mean,” Picard amended, brave and noble as the man had ever been in this or any reality.

“I’m fine. Help me.” Q tried and failed to lift his right arm into Picard’s--Jean-Luc’s; he could only be Jean-Luc, with such soft, tender light as that--space.

Jean-Luc kneeled at Q’s side for the second time that night and carefully lifted the numb, weakened arm into his hands. He fiddled with the braces in confusion for a few seconds before finding the catches and releasing them deftly with a few twists and flicks of his thumbs. “Where do I--?”

Q yawned. “Don’t care. Close by.”

Jean-Luc set the braces in the hollow of the nightstand, stacking the circlets on top of each other one by one. When he lifted Q’s right leg to do the same, Q hissed in a sharp breath.

Jean-Luc went immediately still. “All right?”

“Pins and noodles. Needles. S’fine.”

Jean-Luc nodded at that and continued on, moving himself to access the bands instead of forcing Q’s leg to move to accommodate his hands. 

When Jean-Luc came for the VISOR, Q jerked back reflexively. Jean-Luc pulled back, too, and they held still in that stalemate for a long moment, the silence tight between them. 

“I don’t. I don’t like it off,” Q said, as apologetically as he could manage.

“Isn’t it dangerous, leaving it on all night?”

Q swallowed. “If. If she. If sh-she co-comes back--.” His words rattled about in his mouth, rushed and stammered and slushy between his teeth in his sudden, visceral fear.

“I’ll be here,” Jean-Luc said, firmly. “I’ll be here, and you’ll be safe.”

Q hesitated. 

“Q. Don’t you remember? We promised each other ages ago--we protect each other.”

They had made a pinky promise to that effect, as children. And then, as teens, a blood pact (and hadn’t Q _hated_ that! So painful! So gross! But Jean-Luc had said it was important, vital, even, to their oath to each other as friends and brothers and, hell, who was Q to say no to an entreaty like that?). And at the Academy--after the mess with the Naussicans, when Q was given the greenlight to drink alcohol after his recovery--they’d drunk to it over a single shared pint of (disgusting) Terran beer. 

Q had been losing himself in the wrong story, lately. He had spent far too many hours during the last year worrying about the lost universe and his part in it, reminded daily of his sins by the lingering effects of M’s attacks. He should have remembered his other, more recent, history, instead. A sprawling vineyard and a humble home in the French countryside. A bustling Academy in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge. A series of starships, each more impressive and beautiful than the last. Jean-Luc Picard at his side, always. Q had forgotten his place in this universe. Not a shadow, but a cherished friend.

Q nodded.

Jean-Luc’s hands pressed feather light against the sides of the VISOR, releasing them from the nodes at Q’s temples. It didn’t hurt, exactly, but the sudden loss of overwhelming input into his mind always left Q feeling unmoored. Jean-Luc kept one hand on Q’s left hand as he leaned away--presumably to put the VISOR on top of the nightstand for safe keeping.

Q fumbled for Jean-Luc’s wrist with his left hand and tugged the man closer. “Don’t go,” he echoed.

“I won’t. I’m here,” Jean-Luc promised. 

“Good,” Q managed, though the word came out as a slur of syllables more than actual speech. He was so tired, even his brain could no longer put forth the inordinate effort of making language happen. Q dared to rest his head on Jean-Luc’s shoulder. The other man allowed him. Q wanted to bask in his luck for a long while, but sleep claimed him between one breath and the next.

\--


	9. Chapter 9

\--

Q tapped out the last line of his message, nodding absently along as the computer read the words back to him. His touch-typing, even one handed, remained as accurate as ever, but it gave him comfort to hear his words verified, all the same. 

As Bev had predicted, Q’s lingering aphasia had no impact on his use of written language. It didn’t matter if he was slow to find the right word, in that medium. Moreover, his gaffes were often of a type the computer’s built-in editor could recognize and correct on the fly. While he could communicate verbally well enough, now, the science officer found it more expedient to send out longer messages via text. And his newest report to the _Enterprise’s _CSO was a long one, indeed.

T’Letch’s presence registered with him long before she stepped into the sightline of the VISOR. Ever since that last three-way meld, Q and the Vulcan Ensign had a bond the like of which transcended the vast majority of mortal experience. Mostly, Q used it to mentally prod at T’Letch throughout the day until she had no choice but to bring him another coffee. But there were softer, more friendly ways to use the minor power, too. Now, he brushed his consciousness lightly against her own in lieu of a verbal greeting.

Their bond wasn’t so strong that they could telepathically communicate, but his message of ‘just a minute’ must have gotten across. T’Letch stood off to the side and waited, her hands folded patiently behind her.

The computer finished its recitation of Q’s scathing message, and he pressed the ‘send’ key with a flourish. 

“Your ceaseless provocation toward the CSO continues to perplex me,” T’Letch said as she dutifully helped Q get to his feet. “I know that you do not wish to hold the position yourself, so your actions are not born of envy. I also know that you consider the doctor’s expertise sound, so you do not act from aggravation with his work. Why, then, do you continue to harass him?” 

“‘Harrass’. Such a st-strong word,” Q replied. 

“An accurate one,” T’Letch retorted with all the stoic ease of a Vulcan.

“He’s soft,” Q said, after a moment of thought. Anything more than that would be too much effort to formulate verbally. 

“You intend to provide a--how do Humans put it?-- ‘trial by fire’? Does his ‘softness’ impede his work in some way that you find offensive?”

“_Reliant. Stargazer_. Years ago. Service taught me...cowards, idiots-- get people killed.”

“I have not seen any evidence to suggest that Dr. Porter is anything but a brave and dedicated officer of the ‘Fleet.”

Q nodded. “Yeah. So far, he’s good.”

T’Letch all but sighed at him. “I do not understand you, sa-kai.”

“Ask Jean-Luc.”

T’Letch bowed her head in a nod of recognition. It was her habit, in fact, to ask the captain to explain his spouse’s bizarre behavior when she, herself, could not fathom him.

Just then, Dr. Porter rounded the corner. 

“Spe-speak of the Devil,” Q remarked.

Porter stopped short at the sight of them. He waved the PAAD in his hands in the air between them. Q could make out the text of his latest message on the screen. Porter was devoted to staying on top of his inbox. Q liked that about him.

“Q, if you’re going to take umbrage with my data collection schemas, take it up with ‘Fleet policy, would you? I’m not the one who decided we should all go metric all of the sudden, am I? Hell, keep your own records, if you like. Stop flooding my ‘box! You’re a menace.” Porter paused to offer a respectful nod to T’Letch. He then turned his attention to Q, again. “Good work on the rest of it, though--I swear, you’re a damn wizard when it comes to inorganics. You should give a seminar to the rest of the team, sometime. We could all use a refresher, and your theories are just as fascinating as they are completely barmy.”

Q grinned at the CSO, offering the man a silent nod in reply to his tirade and compliment, both.

Porter huffed a breath and moved to pass them. Before he’d gone more than a few steps, he turned on his heel and called after them: “At least correlate it all in a daily update, instead! Save me a hell of a lot of scrolling, wouldn’t it?”

And then he disappeared around another corner and out of sight.

T’Letch considered the absent space where he had walked for a moment before she and Q resumed walking. “I understand, now. You do believe Dr. Porter to be highly capable. Even likeable, perhaps. However, you feel it is your prerogative to ascertain the location of his boundaries--you wish to determine where, exactly, the doctor considers his lines crossed.”

Q lifted his shoulder. “Partially.”

T’Letch mused on that a moment. “You are not troubled by metric measurements. I have seen you work with a large variety of mathematical structures, even many that should, by rights, be completely beyond the comprehension of a mortal man. Metric measurements should not trouble you. The complaint that you made to Dr. Porter was made on behalf of another, was it not?”

“Swenson. Good areo engineer. Used to customary measurements. Policy shift to metric. Swenson’s work full of errors, now.”

T’Letch brushed her fingers against his in a light, familial touch. “I see. Swenson did not wish to bring his complaint to the CSO for fear of revealing his intellectual weaknesses. Therefore, you interceded on his behalf.”

Q returned the light touch. It drew a few looks from officers not educated in the intricacies of Vulcan kisses, but he ignored that easily enough. “My reputation. I’m lo-loud. Rude. Smart. I complain? No one cares.”

The Vulcan woman tilted her head slightly in thought. “I do not believe that the captain could have explained this to me, Q,” she said, carefully. “I am not sure he would recognize your actions as benevolent subterfuge.”

“New me,” Q sighed. The topic had been centric to most of he and Jean-Luc’s shared counseling sessions, as of late. Just as Geordi had surmised, Q’s experience had caused a drastic shift in his perceptions. He had changed in more than physically. Q had and always would be a creature well suited to adaptability and change. Jean-Luc remained as immutable as he had been since the end of their Academy days, however. Where Q accepted his limitations and opportunities and thrived, Jean-Luc floundered, his expectations based on a version of his husband who did not and could not continue to exist.

“Q! T’Letch!” a voice called before they had passed the threshold of Ten Forward’s door. Q cast a sideways glance at Guinan. He always expected her to, somehow, recognize him for what he’d once been and react with the hostility she’d displayed in the lost reality. But she only met his gaze with professional recognition and then looked away, completely untroubled by the normal Human man in her midst.

“Our friends are calling. Are you well?”

Q nodded and shook himself from his musings. “Old memory,” he excused. And T’Letch nodded with complete understanding. A Vulcan’s mind, while paltry compared to the mind of a Q, was significantly advanced enough that T’Letch likely knew exactly what he was referring to, thanks to her experience in the open meld. She had seen it all, understood as much of it as she could, and likely had perfect recall of every event, even more clear than Q’s own. 

Perhaps if Picard possessed such an ability, he and Q would find an easier peace between them, able to rely on the direct experience of their once shared history to guide them through their current difficulties. 

“You look like someone just shot your dog,” Commander Riker commented as Q and T’Letch joined he and Deanna at their usual table. Data and Geordi were not present, yet, but it wasn’t uncommon for them to arrive late. (Data, of course, possessed a perfect awareness of the passage of time, but Geordi tended to get lost in his work, and Data apparently didn’t care to dissuade his friend of the bad habit.)

Q sneered at the man. Riker’s lack of beard remained a faint, untraceable irritation to him. His smooth cheeks gave him the appearance of an impetuous youth to an extent that every utterance the man made struck Q as overly sly. “How barbaric,” Q drawled, and he left it at that.

Deanna shot Q a dark look, obviously wanting him to play nicely with her former paramour. 

Q sighed and lifted his left hand in surrender. His right lagged behind. After a day spent working at his console, the effectiveness of the anti-gravity bands tended to wane. “Boring topic,” he assured them. Certainly, most of the bridge crew had already been privy to far more of his and Jean-Luc’s personal business than made the captain comfortable. Q had less shame, but that didn’t mean he wished to subject himself to Deanna’s unofficial counseling, tonight. They had enough of that in their friendship as it was, probably enough to call a conflict of interest into question, if anyone were interested to try it.

Riker obligingly took up the thread of conversation after that, regalling them with tales of daring do that Q largely ignored. His focus drifted, distracted by the building ache in his limbs. Over the past few weeks, the static sensations had returned to his right side along with flashes of sharp, stabbing pain. Bev insisted it was a sign of continuing progress. Q argued that progress tended to _progress_ to something. As it was, he languished in a state of half-feeling, bothered by recurring pains and irritations that seemed unlikely to ever resolve to full feeling again. 

“Q?”

Q blinked at Deanna, the motion lost to her behind the VISOR. He pulled himself together with a low “hm?” of response.

Deanna gestured past him with her chin. Q turned to follow her gaze. He recognized Jean-luc by the long lines of glowing light stretched between them. “Unexpected,” Q said to the table at large. Picard--the captain, on duty nearly always, even when he wasn’t--rarely ever stopped at Ten Forward. He felt it gave the wrong impression to the crew.

Jean-Luc looked stiff as he approached. “May I join you?” he asked. Q found himself speechless, but Riker beat him to it, anyway.

“Of course, sir.”

“I apologize for the unexpected intrusion. My video conference with the admiralty was postponed. I found myself with nothing else to do, and I thought perhaps I might join you all at dinner, tonight.”

“Of course you may,” Deanna assured him, far too enthusiastically. Q could feel more than see her eyes dart from him to the captain and back again. She would, of course, see this as a breakthrough step in their current difficulties. Deanna had a bad habit, sometimes, of seeing every action or inaction through the lens of her work. She forgot, maybe, that more often than not people were people, moving through their daily lives without much thought about it one way or another.

Jean-Luc sat in the empty chair beside Q. His knee knocked lightly against Q’s left side knee and Q rapidly adjusted his reading of the situation. Perhaps this was a positive, breakthrough type of gesture, after all. 

“Well, then. What’s good that I should try, tonight?”

Q knocked Jean-Luc’s knee back. “Fudge sundae,” he answered, immediately.

Deanna laughed. “He’s right, actually.”

“That would ruin my appetite,” Jean-Luc said, sounding so much like his own mother in that moment that Q couldn’t help but grin. 

“The Andorian fruit salad is pretty good,” Riker offered. 

Q groaned. “Boring.” He pointed an accusatory finger at Riker. “Grow a bre-bread. No. Beard. Grow a beard.”

Surprised, Riker stroked his cheek with the back of his hand. He glanced at Deanna. “Oh? Should I?”

Deanna blushed. “If you like.”

When the waiter came ‘round, Q ordered a hot fudge sundae. Jean-Luc ordered a salad, but he spent most of the night trying and failing to pilfer spoonfuls out of Q’s bowl.

\--

Q leaned hard on Jean-Luc on their way back to Q’s quarters. Despite the progress they had made in rebuilding their relationship, Q retained his own rooms. Jean-Luc didn’t seem willing to press the issue, so they remained quartered apart, separated by the many floors between the rooms reserved for civilian travelers and the more permanent quarters for ‘Fleet and their families.

“Dr. Porter send me a message earlier today, commending and condemning you in turns, as usual. I don’t understand why you have to pester the man so.”

One of the anti-gravity bands on his arm refused to click loose. Q clicked his tongue in irritation and tugged at it with his left hand. 

Jean-Luc swatted at him. “Just wait,” he ordered. He worked all of the bands off of Q’s leg and then moved to the tricky one stuck at his elbow. It twisted off easily in Jean-Luc’s hands. With an air of familiar routine, Jean-Luc stacked the bands neatly in the hollow of the nightstand. “Are you ready to remove the VISOR?”

“Later.”

Jean-Luc hummed his agreement and joined Q in stretching out on Q’s bed. He folded his arms behind him and leaned back against them, staring up at the slate gray ceiling. “You know, my quarters have a starscape view practically in every room.”

“Offering?” Q asked, rather surprised. He hadn’t expected Jean-Luc to broach the topic anytime soon, if ever at all. He hadn’t been offended, really. Jean-Luc had likely gotten used to his own space. Q was a difficult sleeper, these days. He understood.

“If you’re interested. As you remarked when we first arrived here, the bed has plenty of room.”

Q smiled slightly. What a lifetime ago that night seemed, now. 

“All right,” Q agreed. He had, afterall, rather missed having a good, clear view of the stars at night.

\--

Bev watched him closely, her body betraying her hyperfocus in every sharp line. “Okay. Try it again.”

With a deep breath, Q lifted his right leg and stepped forward. Without the anti-gravity devices to assist, the motion felt heavy and stilted, as if he walked through molasses. But he made several long strides successfully, despite the strangeness of the sensation. Everyone seemed confident that he would ‘get used to it’ in time. 

“I do recommend a crutch or cane, Dr. Hill,” one of Q’s physical therapists offered, thoughtfully. “You’re moving pretty well, but the muscles are bound to get fatigued. A stationary assistive device would save you a lot of trouble in the long run by taking some of the weight off.”

Q nodded his agreement. “Whatever works,” he said, turning with a slight wobble and making his way back to where Bev, the therapist, and Jean-Luc all stood. Jean-Luc’s smile was hard to read through the VISOR, but Q deduced its presence anyway based on the way the threads of light between them glowed. 

“I’ll go fetch some of our sample devices for you to try,” the physical therapist offered.

“In the meantime, sit down. We’re overdue for a check up on your eyes.”

“Waste of time,” Q singsonged, though he sat on the bed and removed the VISOR with no real fuss. 

“No, it’s not. Maintaining a workable status quo is just as notable as any other datapoint. Besides, I want to talk to you about some new options that are on the table, now.”

“Options?” Jean-Luc echoed. Q watched him move from the corner of the VISOR’s range. Jean-Luc’s hand was warm against his right hand as he pulled them palm-to-palm. Some odd, prickly static remained all along his right side, but Q had no trouble sensing the pressure and heat of the other man’s hand in his. 

“When Q first began to experience degradation in his ocular nerves, I contacted several specialists. Most of them blew me off, but a few promised to let me know if anything useful came up. Recently, one of them sent me an article about some bleeding edge technologies--specifically, custom tailored synthetic eyes that can be transplanted in the socket and connected directly to the brain in a similar manner to the VISOR. Initial trials suggest that the readings wouldn’t be exact to an organic sighted experience, but the input would mimic it much more closely than what the VISOR provides.”

“Yes,” Q agreed.

“Oh. Well, it’s initial research and development, Q. There’s much more testing to be done, and you should probably--.”

“Yes,” Q interrupted. 

Bev paused for a moment. Q had a feeling she and Jean-Luc were trading significant looks. “All right,” she agreed, finally. “I’ll have my contact keep us updated, and when the time is right, we’ll look into it. Okay?”

“_Yes_.”

\--


	10. Chapter 10

The sight of Ensign Sonya Gomez making her way out of the replimat one morning after breakfast caused Q to stop dead in his tracks. He knew her face but vaguely, but even his pitiful Human recall could associate her appearance with one of the more shameful, painful periods of his old, lost life.

“What is it?” Jean-Luc asked, following his line of sight. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Turbolift,” Q said, feeling dazed. He snatched Jean-Luc’s wrist in his left hand and pulled them both toward the nearest ‘lift.

“This this untoward,” Jean-Luc drawled, but his brows were tight, his eyes assessing Q from head to toe. “Something’s frightened you. What’s wrong?”

Q all but threw himself into the empty ‘lift, tugging Jean-Luc behind him just before the doors could close. “The M are here.”

Jean-Luc drew himself up to his full height, expression abruptly stony. “What’s their intention, this time?”

“Not sure. Maybe. Might want to join up. Or something else.” 

“‘Join up?’”

“I wanted to be crew. I asked. You said no.”

Jean-Luc snorted softly. “Well of course I did. It would have been highly irregular, don’t you think? Allowing a strange alien entity, not even part of the Federation, to join the ranks of the _Enterprise_?”

Q rolled his eyes expansively. Ever since the transplant procedure, he delighted in being able to properly express his annoyance to those deserving of it. “Spoilsport. I would have been helpful. Besides. I’m fun.”

Jean-Luc patted his arm. “Of course you are,” he said, on the edge of condescending. 

“You said Riker...be captain. If I kept you. And I was tempted,” Q told him, matter-of-factly.

Jean-Luc smiled at him, warmer perhaps than the statement deserved. “I am sure you were. Q, why are we in a turbolift when the M are apparently hot on our heels?”

Q leaned forward over his cane--a fine, hand carved piece special ordered from a carpenter in France--and pressed the emergency button, forcing the doors to open despite having apparently not left the floor. 

Jean-Luc frowned at him, clearly at a loss. Q waved toward the open doors. “After you.”

“Ah. Well, that’s unexpected,” Jean-Luc admitted as he and Q stepped not onto the same floor but, instead, into one of the _Enterprise’s_ own shuttles.

Q stepped after him. “Hello. Do I have the pleasure of speaking to M?” he asked the obstinsibly Human looking entity waiting for them. The face was not one that Q recognized, but that didn’t mean the M in question was not a former Q or even a former friend. Where once Q could have read the being’s individual essence with ease, his Human senses saw only a short, round figure with brown skin and doe-y brown eyes. The entity wore civilian’s attire, a flowing silk wrap-around top and wide-legged pants.

“Your condition appears to have improved admirably,” the M remarked in lieu of proper greeting. 

Q lifted a shoulder. “Well enough. You have business with us?” He kept his tone carefully cordial, despite how displeased he was to see a member of the M once more. This one didn’t seem especially hostile but, honestly, Q had never been especially aggressive himself back in the old days. It didn’t mean they couldn’t do serious damage. 

“Not the business you expect,” M said. They sat down as they spoke, situating themselves quite comfortably in the pilot’s chair of the shuttle. It spun around by design, the better to survey the area. “You expect a tantrum, perhaps? An unluckly early meeting with the species called Borg?”

Jean-Luc didn’t flinch at the name--for all that he had seen the truth of the encounter in their meld, the fear was distant for the man, literally the worry of a person who didn’t exist. 

“Something like that,” Q agreed. He eased himself slowly into the co-pilot chair. With continued physical therapy and the cane, his mobility had been determined adequate. Even so, he tired easily, and he had no reason or desire to stand through the length of this likely interminable conversation.

“The Human race is, truly, unprepared for what faces them. The M consider it a kindness, what you offered to this crew in the Forgotten Time.”

Q raised a brow at the obvious, solemn capitalization. “Go on.”

“I mention it only so that you realize the Continuum’s earnestness. What little quarrel we might have had with you has ended. If anything, your rash behavior leading to the creation of this alternate universe was a boon to the M--you strengthened our numbers and wiped out our last remaining equals, our enemies, with hardly a thought.”

Jean-Luc did flinch at that. Q did, too. “The point, please.”

“The M would like to station one of our members among your ranks. As you yourself once said, ‘you are about to move into areas of the galaxy containing wonders more incredible than you can possibly imagine, and terrors to freeze your soul.’ A guide would benefit your mission.”

Jean-Luc and Q traded glances. Q tilted his head at the captain, wondering just what his answer might be, in this reality, under this set of circumstances.

“Terrors like you and your people? Beings who would play with my people the way a cat plays with a mouse?”

M considered this, seemingly unoffended. “Yes. Though I think Q can attest that the Borg aren’t comparable to any domesticated creature, even one so bloodthirsty as a feline.”

“Yes,” Q agreed. The Borg couldn’t be easily compared to anything in Jean-Luc’s experience. Q himself would be hard pressed to come up with a more soulless, enterprising, dangerous species--and he’d seen many in his eons of life. The Federation had no hope whatsoever against them in its current state. 

_They called him Locutus--the “one who speaks.” They would have kept him in their thrall, made him a spokesperson for their cause, an unwilling intermediary between the Borg and its prey._

Even withered near to dust with age, laid upon his death bed, nearing the end, the Picard of the lost reality had suffered the whispered remnants of the Collective in the back of his mind. He had died unwitnessed, slipping away alone. Only Q was present to hear his last words spoken in that dreary silence: “Your resistance is hopeless.”

What a dismal way to die.

“What benefit does an arrangement such as what you offer afford to you and your people? What’s in it for you?”

Q startled out of his remembrances at the sound of Jean-Luc’s voice. “Good question.”

“Thank you,” Jean-Luc replied, distantly. He kept his gaze on the M.

M lifted their shoulders. “Beings of our infinite power and knowledge often lack in engaging entertainment, Captain Picard. There’s no shortage of M in our ranks who wouldn’t jump at the chance. You’re weak and arrogant and no end of trouble, certainly. But, really, that’s good TV, isn’t it?”

Jean-Luc made a face. Q made one, too, for slightly different reasons. He always hated it when one of his fellow Q got meta. Somehow, an M doing it was even worse.

“With that reasoning, wouldn’t having an M on our side make us all less interesting?” Jean-Luc quibbled.

Q grinned to watch the M’s jaw tighten. Ah, finally, someone could truly sympathize. Picard’s self-righteous gall never ceased to be a point of constant frustration (and interest). For the Human man to throw himself to brazenly against the might of a Q--or M, in this case--was the height of folly. Q had found it charming. The M, apparently, less so.

“Our assistance would be conditional,” M ground out with forced patience. Their eyes flickered over to Q. “Even the Q surely had limits to the generosity he intended to provide.”

“Would give him the world. If he wanted it. But that’s just me,” Q replied, with a sharp smile. 

M sighed. “Will you be accepting our offer or not?”

“It’s not a decision I could make alone even if I wanted to. I must confer with my crew and the admiralty. Taking an M onboard is as much a liability as a benefit. Serious discussions will have to be had. Many voices must be weighed.”

Q and M sighed in chorus.

Jean-Luc frowned at Q. “You don’t agree?”

“I do, actually,” Q admitted. “But I remember, now. Why I threw you across space. The last time.”

Jean-Luc’s resulting pique also brought back bittersweet memories. 

The captain looked to M. “We need time.”

Where Q would have stomped his foot and, indeed, thrown the _Enterprise_ into the waiting arms of the Borg, the M merely shrugged. “Very well,” they said. “It’s not like my people don’t have time to spare. I’ll be back, when you’re ready.”

And then they disappeared in a flash.

Q sighed dramatically, staring around their environment with a moue of distaste. “Could have taken us back, too,” he complained.

Jean-Luc hummed his agreement, sitting in the vacated pilot’s chair. “True,” he agreed. He keyed up a few displays. “We’re out of locator range from the ‘ship, but not so terribly far out of her orbit. We can be home again in six hours or so.”

Q smirked to himself idly. What a familiar situation. “Set the autopilot,” he suggested.

\--

The Admiral’s frown added twenty years to her already significant age. “In reviewing your logs, Captain, we found it quite evident that the entity known as ‘M’ could be qualified only as a dangerous, unpredictable threat. We’re surprised you feel otherwise.”

Captain Picard cleared his throat lightly. “Admiral, I confess, I do believe the M Continuum to be a largely mercurial lot. I’m sure you realize that I’m hardly unaffected by the actions of their most foremost representative.”

Q sighed. Loudly. The eyes of everyone in the room--and on the screen--turned to him.

“You have something to add, Dr. Hill?” the Admiral asked, politely but not without an implied edge. 

“I’m most affected. No one else. Not in the room. Not on the ship,” Q reminded them. He rubbed the sweating palm of his left hand over his knee. “But I have sent in logs, too.”

The Admiral’s already sour expression went the way of a mouldy lemon. “Yes. The council has reviewed your report several times over. Of course you realize that some of us might remain skeptical, considering that none of the events recorded in your...memoir...can be proven with any evidence.”

Q curled his fingers and let them loose again. “Weird thing to lie about,” he pointed out. The stress of the meeting made his words even more stilted than usual, with long, awkward pauses drawing in between each. The bridge crew were more than used to it, but the Admiral seemed twitchy, shifting uncomfortably in her seat during every prolonged silence.

“Be that as it may--.”

“--M and Q are kin. Basically the same species. The Q were varied, as individuals. Like Humans. Like Vulcans. Like most other races. Painting the Continuum with one brush--it’s...it’s n-not reasonable.” Q swallowed thickly.

Bev quietly poured him a glass of water from the communal pitcher and pushed it his way. Q nodded at her and took a large gulp.

“Dr. Hill believes the rewards of this venture far outweigh the risk,” Picard said, not for the first time. 

“But you don’t agree with his assessment,” the Admiral pressed in return.

Picard’s shoulders set, his jaw tightened for a beat. “I’m far more cautious. But I don’t disbelieve his assessment. What Q--what Dr. Hill--has seen in his many lifetimes, in multiple realities, makes him a foremost expert on the incalculable dangers awaiting my and other ‘Fleet crews in these far reaches of space. My people and I are all aware of those dangers. We believe our duties to be worth every conflict, every trial. But none of us have a wish to suffer and die without cause. The M could be utilized like any other weapon, as a means of protection and defense.”

“A single Borg cube. Twenty-nine ships, wiped out,” Q reminded them all. “A Q--a M--against the whole Borg species? A snap--” he snapped his fingers of his left hand to little effect. Down the table a ways, Geordi snapped for him, the sound robust and striking “--and they’re gone.”

The Admiral’s brows raised high. “Surely you also see exactly why such an assessment of these creature’s capabilities causes us concern. Today, the entire Borg hive. Tomorrow, the Earth.”

Q shook his head. “Already could do that. But they don’t.”

“Who are you to say they haven’t? Who’s to say these people haven’t destroyed and rebuilt our universe a hundred times over, as you did when you were like them?”

“Even the Continuum has rules. I broke a rule. It’s not the same. Not condoned. Not common. It’s too dangerous to be done a lot.”

“With all due respect, Admiral, I believe the majority of my staff feel that the old adage ‘better my friend than my enemy’ is prudent, in this case.”

_If only Picard had felt quite so charitable toward me, last time, _Q thought. How differently things might have been for the old Picard and his reality, if only he’d agreed to Q’s request. Perhaps they could have found peace between them, given time, if Q had only proven himself more of a help than a hindrance.

“If that’s true, Captain, this discussion seems moot. It sounds to me like your crew and our organization are being strong armed, if not directly threatened. A ‘yes’ is hardly a ‘yes’ if it’s coerced, and I’m not comfortable giving credence to a species who would react to ‘no’ with destruction and violence.”

“Assumptions,” Q accused. He rubbed the fingers of his left hand hard into the meaty part of his right thigh. All these hours sat still and tense around the boardroom table made his pain flare as well as his annoyance.

“Who will manage this entity? Who will keep the M in check? Are we to put that kind of power in the hands of one man? Are you truly willing to take on that level of responsibility, Captain Picard?”

Q blinked slowly. He’d never thought of it like that, before. He would have done practically anything for Picard, when he had the ability to do so--not that the man ever actually asked. Had Picard been aware of that fact? Had he feared what it might mean, to have Q at his beck and call? Had the terror of temptation been just another obstacle between them, keeping Picard always outside of Q’s grasping, desperate reach?

Q shuddered. Beside him, Deanna put a gentle hand on his elbow, her brows drawn in sympathy and confusion, no doubt both startled and troubled by his sudden shift in emotion.

Jean-Luc closed his eyes. “Perhaps we should all take a break.”

The Admiral sighed gustily. “If you wish. We’ll convene again in ten ship-standard hours. Get some rest, all of you. And, please, come back to me with a solution, should it even possibly exist.”

The screen went black. 

\--

“You look like someone just spit on you,” Jean-Luc greeted Q with good cheer. 

It was summer in France, the school was closed for a brief holiday, and the very air buzzed about them with the promise of long, lazy days--when Jean-Luc wasn’t being pressed into vineyard duty, at least.

Q looked up from his slump. He’d sat on the front porch steps for a good two hours, waiting for Jean-Luc to come home. Now that the boy was back, though, Q felt no real comfort in his presence. The persistent black cloud over his head failed to dissipate. If anything, in contrast to the bright gleam of Jean-Luc’s happiness, it felt blacker and heavier than ever.

Jean-Luc sat down on the step next to Q. For a long time they stared out over the grounds together in total silence, listening to the breeze in the grass. Finally, Jean-Luc let out a soft sigh and flopped to the side, resting his weight hard against Q’s shoulder. “Want to talk about it?”

“Do you know anyone who’s dead?” Q asked.

Jean-Luc blinked rapidly at the question. He looked tempted to laugh, but managed not to. “What are you talking about?”

“I mean, did you ever know anyone you liked who died, before?”

Jean-Luc shook his head. “My parents’ parents both died ages ago, when I wasn’t even born. There’s some other old people from the village who’ve passed, I guess. But I didn’t know them well. Anyone else I know, you know, too, so you know they’re all alive. Has someone died?” That seemed a sobering thought for Jean-Luc. The amusement in his eyes went dark.

“No. Well. Yes. Someone is dead. Someone I care about. But he wasn’t--well. You don’t know him, not technically.” Q sighed and ground his fingertips into his eyes, a classic sign of frustration on his part. “By a relative, Standard, universal calendar reckoning, today is the anniversary of his death. There’s been others. But this one is strange. I feel it more, today, than any other time before.”

“You miss your friend,” Jean-Luc surmised, simply. He hummed in recognition. “I’m sorry for your loss. You know, the Vulcans have a saying for these situations I quite like: ‘I grieve with thee.’ And I do. He must have been important, to have been your friend.”

Q took in and released a thin, shuddery breath. “Literally the most important person to me in the entire universe,” he agreed, faintly.

If Jean-Luc was offended by that assessment, he didn’t show it. Instead, he pulled back a bit from the hard lean on Q’s shoulder, the better to look at his profile. “You could tell me about him, if you want to. I’ve heard it helps, talking about it with someone who will listen, I mean.”

Q shook his head. “There isn’t much to say. He was brave. Intelligent. A bit of a stick in the mud, from time to time. But I liked him. And the world was lesser, all over, for his loss.”

“I can’t imagine you ever getting on with anyone you’d describe as a ‘stick in the mud.’ Any time I try to dig my heels in about your pranks and things, you throw a fit.”

“Ha!” Q barked out, incredulous. “The only time I recall you ever demurring in the face of a good prank, _mon ami_, was when I wanted to drop water balloons on the priest and you wouldn’t do it--because you wanted to fill the balloons with cod oil, instead. Hardly the paragon of virtue, you.”

Jean-Luc grinned, not denying it. His grin faded a little. “But your friend was, eh? A paragon?”

Q sighed. “The closest I ever met to it, at least.”

“Did he...well, did he like you back?”

Q prodded Jean-Luc in the ribs with a fingertip. Jean-Luc knew him far too well. “I don’t think so, no. At the time, I didn’t care. I always thought he’d come around on me, given time.”

“But you ran out of time.”

“Yes,” Q agreed, unhappily. “More or less.”

Jean-Luc didn’t question what that could possibly mean. Jean-Luc’s willingness not to pry was one of the staples of their friendship--one of the weight-bearing features that kept their strong foundations from crumbling apart. “I’m sorry. His loss, as far as I’m concerned.”

Q bumped shoulders with his friend. “Yes, well. You’re right. And thank you.” He paused, rubbing his palms over his knees. “I’m starving. Can you distract your Mama while I filch some snacks?”

Jean-Luc snorted softly. “You’ll ruin your dinner.”

“Stick in the mud,” Q accused, gently, almost reverently. 

If Jean-Luc noticed the strangeness of his friend’s expression, in that moment, he didn’t comment on that, either. He bounded to his feet and tugged the other boy up on his, too. “There are macarons in the pantry in a folded paper box. Watch out for the squeaky door. You know Mama has ears like a bat.”

\--

“I’d ask a penny for your thoughts, but it seems to me they might be worth far more than that, based on that stormcloud you call an expression.”

Q looked up from the PAAD he’d been staring blankly at for the better part of an hour. Jean-Luc had been in uniform so much, lately, that seeing him sprawled out on the couch in his sleep clothes made Q’s mind veer in confusion. 

“What is it?” Jean-Luc pressed.

“Solved the Admiral’s problem,” Q said.

Jean-Luc sat upright, ears all but perked. “Truly? Tell me.”

Q waved his left hand dismissively. “Dumb thought. You won’t like it.”

“At this rate, even a terrible solution is better than none at all. Give us something to work with, at least.”

Q slid off his chair and limped over to the couch--without the cane, his right leg dragged hard against the floor, making movement slow and stilted. He tossed himself down on it, throwing his long legs up over the back and resting his head on Jean-Luc’s thigh. He gazed up at the other man, expression still stormy with his thoughts. “Admiral’s fears. Summary?”

Jean-Luc made a thoughtful sound. “Well, largely her fears lie in the following: One, that should we say ‘yes’ to the M’s offer, we will find ourselves unable to control or mediate the overwhelming power of the creature once on board. Second, that should we say ‘no’ to the M’s offer, they will retaliate against us and all the Federation for the offense. Either way, we’ve a very powerful entity whose abilities we cannot hope to combat.”

“Need leverage,” Q suggested, speaking slowly. The ship-standard chronometer on the wall indicated it was rolling into the early-morning hours. Jean-Luc had managed to rest for an hour or two after their dismissal, but Q’s all-nighter left his words sluggish and truncated, oppressed by a pervasive need for sleep.

“Go on.”

“Say ‘yes’ to the M. Prevent retribution.”

“But open ourselves up to the possibility of the M on board being out of our control. As much as it might _seem_ the perfect solution to simply snap the Borg out of existence, such decisions can’t be made without oversight.”

“Say ‘yes.’ Have leverage over M on board.”

“How?”

Q lifted a shoulder against Jean-Luc’s knee. “Not full thought. Third concern. For the Admiral. Remember?”

Jean-Luc’s own expression went sour. “Even if oversight over the M could be managed, it raises concerns about one or even multiple members of an authority having say over a being that is, essentially, a weapon of mass destruction.”

“Data could take over the ship.”

“What?”

“Data is abnormally strong. And smart. He could mutiny. But doesn’t. Who has oversight over Data?”

“Well, myself, of course.”

“Could snap your bones. Throw you out an airlock. Not break a sweat,” Q reminded him, patiently. “So much for oversight. What keeps Data from mutiny? Not you. What else?”

Jean-Luc frowned, brows drawn in thought. “Himself, I suppose. Data could easily overthrow me as a figure with authority over his behaviors. He could dismantle the entire crew, in fact. But he doesn’t because he has no wish to do so. Mutiny wouldn’t serve him.”

“Data benefits from status quo. Learns about Humanity. Makes friends. Is happy. So, answers to your authority.” Q went silent a moment, marshalling his words. “You have oversight over Data. Order Data to kill Geordi with his strength and smarts. No explanation. No reason. Just order. Data wouldn’t do it. Data has control of self. No blind loyalty. Not even in Starfleet.”

“Our relationship as it exists is advantageous to Data in a way that encourages him to self-mediate, despite how his inherent abilities could so easily make him a threat. And no one worries about my having sole authority over Data because he has free will. I see your meaning. But that does lead to the question: What can we possibly provide that would encourage an M to do the same?”

“Leverage,” Q pressed again.

“Again I ask: How?”

Q hesitated. Then he said, carefully, “_Enterprise. _Better than an M prison.”

Jean-Luc’s confused expression melted swiftly into one of pure horror. He sat fully upright, dislodging Q’s head from his lap in the process. Q sighed, sitting up on his own power. They stared at each other for several long seconds. “You cannot possibly be serious.”

“Let me talk to her,” Q said, more as a statement than a question.

Jean-Luc shook his head, starting to rise to his feet. 

Q placed a hand on his arm, holding him still. “Let me try.”

\--


	11. Chapter 11

Q shifted uncomfortably against his cane, relieving some of the pressing weight off of his aching left side. The climb up the mountain had been a harrowing one. He might have asked the M to show him some consideration and simply teleport him into the cell, but his pride had not allowed it. To good effect, it seemed. The M had watched his climb with steady, curious eyes. When he’d finally scrambled up into the deep cave, they’d pressed their humanoid palms together in mimicry of applause. Good. If Q could prove himself worthy, it might save him and the rest of the _Enterprise_ crew a lot of hassle down the line. 

The light in the cave was insufficient. No doubt an M in his situation wouldn’t notice it. And, if they did, they’d have the capacity to simply will a bright light into existence. Q, for his part, had a flashlight in his pack, and he put it to liberal use, gliding the small beam around the space from edge to edge.

His light caught on a flash of familiar red. Slowly, M--once a Q, once his mate--unfolded from her defensive crouch inside the barred cell. To Q’s eyes, she appeared in the Human guise she’d worn several times before--tall, pale, redheaded. To Q’s eyes, the environment they occupied looked like a deep, dark cave carved out of a massive mountain. Q’s eyes saw what they needed to see to help his brain make sense of his reality. He could remember enough of his time as an all-knowing, all-seeing entity to know that what his Human mind could comprehend and what truly surrounded him were entirely different things. He decided not to dwell on it too much. 

“You,” she said, in a low hiss of surprise and anger.

“Me,” Q agreed, faintly. He wished Starfleet uniforms had pockets. Everyone needed a place to put things, and right then he desperately wished to cram his hands into his pockets, hide himself away. Maybe, when he returned to the ship, he’d write a scathing memo to HQ about the inanity of pocketless clothes.

Her eyes raked over him from head to toe and back again. “You look well,” she said, sounding extremely miffed about it. 

“Thanks,” Q replied, ignoring the dripping disdain. “You’ve looked better.”

She snarled at him, but she didn’t argue the point. However she may appear on a metaphysical level, to his eyes she appeared wan, bruised, and unkempt. She looked like a neglected prisoner, in other words.

Q pitied her as much as he feared her, in that moment, and that gave him the strength required to step closer to the bars. Her eyes followed him, hungry and hateful and fever-bright.

“I have to be brief. To the point. I wish otherwise. In the past, I would...make a show of it. Been subtle. Been charming. Been persuasive. Used my words like magic. But I can’t. You made it like that,” Q said, halting from time to time in the midst of his speech, seeking the right turn of phrase. “My words are buried. Sometimes they’re wrong. They’re slow. Big, heavy. Like boulders instead of diamonds. Would have sold you on it. With style. But I can’t. So here we are.”

M stood fully and stepped all the way up to the bars. She wrapped her hands around them and pressed her face against them and stared at him, expression hard. “Get to the point, then.”

“Come work for the ‘Fleet,” Q said. “Be part of the crew.”

M’s eyes bore into him in long, heavy silence. Slowly, her lips twisted in a bitter smile. “You may not be able to speak with fluidity and charm as you once did, but your lies and machinations remain the same. Tell me, what could you possibly hope to gain with such a scheme as this? What are you asking of me? Why?”

“No trick. A deal. Continuum wants representation. We want to make nice. I want it to be you.”

“_Why_?”

“Make a bargain. You would be free. In return, you work with us. In...good faith. Answer to Picard and Admirals. Toe the line. But have free will. Like any member of crew.”

“I tried to destroy you,” M pointed out. “Are you truly coming back for more?”

“Toeing the line,” Q reminded, deadpan. “No more torture.”

“What makes you think I’d accept?”

Q looked around and waved his left hand at it expansively.

M glowered. 

“They have a lot to see.” Q reached out tentatively with his right hand, let the fingers tease with the idea of entering her personal space. He used to touch her a lot, back when they’d been mated. He’d almost forgotten that. “You know it all. You can help. Guide. Teach.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I had someone I wanted to guide and teach once already. He was my son.”

Q nodded, somber-faced. “I know. I’m sorry. Could never be sorry enough.”

M leaned into the tentative brush of his fingers so that her hair touched the tips, the strands course with ill-tending against his skin. Her eyes stared into his own, stared past the synthetic and wiring and into his very mind. “You mean what you say. You’ve come here in good faith. You’re an idiot.”

Q lifted his left shoulder. “Everyone has said so. But I know you. I don’t remember it all. But I remember enough. You were curious, just like me.”

M sneered. “I could never be like you. I would never have done what you did to my family, my people, my universe.”

Q nodded again. “Yes. That’s why we need _you_. The old Picard said no. Wouldn’t let me aboard. He was smart. I would have destroyed them, eventually. Too arrogant. Too impetuous. Not you. You’re practical. You’re more capable.”

“Flattery won’t help you.”

“No,” Q agreed. “But honesty might.”

“They’re fleas,” she said. “Pests. Dumb and weak and beneath us in every way.”

“Beneath _you_,” Q reminded, softly. “I’m a flea.”

M sighed heavily. She tilted her head forward, rested her brows against the bars, her eyes closed. “I do want to be free. You don’t offer freedom, Q, just another kind of prison.”

Q considered that. “Maybe. More like parole. The M will get bored. The crew will move on.”

“Build that into your bargain. I will collaborate with the mortals until the end of their mission.”

“That’s five years. Maybe more, if they’re reinstated.”

“What’s five years? Or fifty? I have eternity before me,” M dismissed. “But I will not be chained to the Federation and the mortal creatures for the rest of time.”

Q stepped back slightly from the bars. “On those terms, then? You’d agree?”

M looked around her dark, lonely prison. “I agree. But I must know: How can you want this of me? For all that I contend that my actions were justified, I am your torturer. Your judge, jury, and attempted executioner. How do you forgive that so easily? Why wouldn’t you leave me here to my punishment, why not allow me to sit here and rot?”

Q rocked back on his heel, digging his cane into the ground to keep himself upright. He smiled at her. “Imprisonment isn’t enough. You’re past punishment. Forgiveness is all that’s left.”

\--

“Your calculations are faulty.”

“They aren’t.”

“They’re incomplete, then. You’ve forgotten to account for the sixth dimension.”

“Uh, well. I...don’t--mortals don’t have six dimensions…?”

M snorted. “Of course they don’t. Why am I not surprised?”

Swenson cast a pleading look Q’s way. Q bit back a smirk. He waved his hand at the younger man. “Get a coffee or something. For me.”

M watched Swenson go with a dark expression. Q threw a PAAD stylus at her, drawing her glower his way, instead. Her Human guise appeared extra imposing ever since her adoption of a stark, all-black uniform and a severe-looking haircut. The crew all but trembled in her wake. 

“They’re limited, stupid apes,” M declared, for the hundreth or so time.

Q rolled his eyes at her and snapped his fingers until she gave the stylus back. “_We_ are,” reminded her. “I don’t remember. What is the sixth?” He did remember, a little, but that didn’t matter. Q was the official M wrangler on board. He asked the questions and made demands that no one else--except maybe the captain--would dare.

M sniffed. “I’ve no desire to tell you if you don’t know. It would take hours to explain.”

“What are hours to eternity?” Q pressed.

M disappeared and reappeared sitting on top of the table, her legs folded underneath her, her elbows resting on her knees. “Very well,” she said, dourly. She lifted her palms flat in the air. Light appeared around them, taking the shape of the known universe. “Listen carefully. I refuse to repeat myself.”

Q obligingly took up his keyboard and prepared to take notes. 

M may have smiled once or twice during her lecture, soaking in his soft sounds of interest and the expression of awe on his face. But if she did, Q barely noticed. And even if he had, he would never tell.

\--

“You’re lightyears away,” Jean-Luc remarked as he set Q’s dinner on the table. “What is it?”

Q blinked slowly back into focus. “Wondering what now.”

“What do you mean?” 

Jean-Luc popped the cork on the bottle of wine--from the Picard vineyards and not replicated; they’d stored it away upon their arrival for a special occasion. It hit the glass with a pleasant sound. Q’s eyes followed the level of the liquid as it rose. 

“Timeline’s off, now. No impromptu Borg. No Calamarains. No Vash or Amanda. No--well. You get the idea.”

“Not really. I only recognize one of those things, and I hardly think we’re missing out by not encountering them.”

“Amanda,” Q repeated, lost in his musings. Would the hidden Q girl exist in this universe? If so, that meant she was the last of her species, in this reality. She would need someone to guide her, to help her grow. The M could, but only one of them had earned the right, to Q’s estimation. Their M--the M of the _Enterprise_\--would probably appreciate the opportunity to foster a child’s power. Hardly a replacement for what she had lost, of course. But it could be a beneficial relationship for all involved, regardless.

“Q?”

Q shook himself slightly and reached for the wine. Jean-Luc placed a palm lightly over the top of the glass, forestalling him. 

“Tell me. Are we safe?”

Q raised a brow. “It’s not safe out here,” he said, and ignored the ensuing wave of deja vu. He would have been more than happy to attempt the old, half-forgotten monologue at his spouse once more, but the effort was beyond him. It was too many words too carefully crafted. Beyond him, now. “It’s never safe.”

“You know what I mean. I understand that the timeline is different. But surely you must have some idea of what’s to come. What should I--what should the crew--be prepared to face?”

Q smiled at him. He leaned forward and kissed Jean-Luc. In the following confusion, Q plucked his wine glass out from under Jean-Luc’s restraining hand and drank a deep, full gulp. “Everything, _mon capitan._ Absolutely everything.”

Jean-Luc pulled at Q’s collar, drawing him in for another kiss. “You’re infuriating.”

Q grinned. “Yes.”

Jean-Luc kissed him again. “What’s out there?”

“Whatever it is,” Q assured. “It’s wondrous. It’s terrible. You’ll love it.”

“I love _you_,” Jean-Luc said, matching Q’s smug expression with his own.

“Yes,” Q repeated. “Obviously.”

“What was it, exactly?” Jean-Luc asked, after they’d both pulled back and turned their attentions to their dinners, instead of each other.

“Hm?” Q questioned, mouth full of pasta.

“When this mess first started, M said that your people had already tried the Human race. What was the verdict? Why were we of such interest to the Q?”

Q swallowed thickly. “You’ll find out.”

“It’s not like you to be secretive,” Jean-Luc complained. “What’s the harm now, anyway, now? That universe and its people are non-existent. The trial is over. M said as much.”

“The trial never ends, _mon ami_. Don’t worry. I’ll be out there. With you.”

Jean-Luc hummed in recognition. Perhaps he, like Q, fell into memories of adventures spent together, side by side. “Good. I would not have it any other way.” 

Humanity had coined a saying. ‘All good things must come to an end.’ For Q, that had happened. It had been good, and it had ended. But then those ‘good things’ had, by chance and fortune and no small bit of sacrifice, begun again. 

_We’ve caught up_, he thought, and now it rang out with a sense of promise instead of doom. He had no idea whatsoever what was coming next. It may have been the first time in his two lifetimes he’d ever had that experience. 

“You’re smiling,” Jean-Luc remarked, topping off Q’s glass.

“I expected it to end here. With M. With us. With me. But it’s not an ending. It’s a new start. It always was. I never knew, until now.”

Jean-Luc frowned in puzzlement but didn’t press the issue. He sipped his own drink and held Q in a fixed, curious gaze. Q met him eye for eye and gave a small shrug.

“I’m excited to see it. What no one has seen before.”

Jean-Luc’s grin reminded Q of decades long past, of a boy with persistently scrubby knees and a well-honed love of wild exploration and daring-do. “Me, too.”

The sound of their wine glasses making contact reminded Q of a song the universe used to sing to him, once, back when it was shiny and new. Or perhaps it was shiny and new again, after all. It was hard to say.


End file.
